So the truck’s reserved, though I’m going to call and confirm it on Friday when we sit here figuring out what utility will be in whose name and call up to get everything turned up. I’m ready to start packing.
I’m posting here because this has just gotten me some eyerolls, but I think it’s pretty cool and I know there’ll be a Doper or two that’ll appreciate it.
As Moving Commandant, I’ve decreed we will use a System. Our boxes, rather than having half-legible scribbles on the top (“What the hell is 'brfgnoogle?”) will have a neat little label with a little code on it. For example, living room stuff will be LR-1 and on, books will be B-1 (books are their own category cause we have lots of books), kitchen stuff will be K-1, and so on. Then, as each box is packed, I will enter the contents in my handy dandy Excel spreadsheet, so when we arrive in Nawth Carolinuh, we will know, roughly, what box everything is in.
Morelin thinks it’s kinda strange but will go along with it, probably to shut me up. No one else appreciates my genius. But you guys do, right? RIGHT?!
Those wonderful moving systems… When we moved, VunderWife came up with this scheme for her sewing stuff, where red duct tape meant that the box was destined for the tiny apartment we’re in at the moment, and blue tape meant that it was to go to storage. The only problem was, she is a packrat of the first degree, and if all of her red tape boxes went to the apartment like she wanted, we’d never get inside. THIS IS NOT AN EXAGERATION OF ANY SORT. She was madder than a wet hen for two months until our stuff came out of the mover’s storage, and into a self-store where we could sort through at our leisure.
She still has all her sh*t running out of the second bedroom, and she says we can fit a single bed and a 16 yo teenager in there on top of everything else. I’m content to leave him in Indianapolis with the inlaws for now, so I don’t have to put up with the bitching from both of them.
I think it’s cool, but for quick n easy reference, you should color-code each box. Yellow for bedroom, blue for kitchen, etc. Get colored tape or permanent markers and just put a stripe on each box, top and side.
You aren’t fooling anybody with that “As each box is packed, I will enter the contents in my handy dandy Excel spreadsheet” crap! You are just planning on sitting at the computer while other people pack the boxes.
“But honey, I have to note what goes into each box so we know what is in each box later.”
Bullshit.
Get off your lazy ass, you bastard, and help with the dirty work!
a) You need to pack the computer, or
b) You get to that “just shove that @^#& into the nearest open box” phase, where you wind up with Pandora’s boxes filled with unspeakable combinations of stuff like two books, a stapler, the epsom salts from the linen closet, the extra box of pancake mix that was in the hall closet and the rest of your socks.
As for color-coding, U-Haul sells kits of multi-colored rolls of box tape. Blue is bedroom 1, green is bedroom 2, orange is kitchen, etc. What’s nifty about this, is if you tape a box like 99.999% of us do, the color will be visible on the top and both ends, compared to labels that are visible only on one face of the box, and the box is ALWAYS in a pile with the label facing against the wall or another box. As moving aids go, this is one of the better ones.
gotpasswords-The 'puters are packed last, always. They go in the car, so we can just run in and set them down. We’re not crazy. As to your other point, we keep several “Oh Shit!” boxes around (usually labelled “Oh Shit!”) for just such emergencies.
The best way to move ( short distance ) is to go one room at a time. When we moved to our current house, about 20 miles away from the other house, we started with the kids’ rooms. Moved the rooms completely. Then the dining room, then the living room and so forth. Everything was moved and put into place all at once. No odd boxes of crap that went into 3 different rooms. It was probably the least stressful move I have ever endured.
Wow, that is way more organized that I have ever been able to pull off. The last time that we moved I had both places available (last months rent paid on apartment, and closed early on condo). It was my big plan to do something like that. What really happened is that in the space of about 2 days I got both households to the point where they were 100% dysfunctional (as in you had to shower at location 1, cook and eat at location 2 etc.) This went on until basically the last moment until I crammed everything in to boxes and dumped them in the living room of our new place (I still have some of those boxes to unpack).
I’m getting ready for my move, no big plans like yours, just writing stuff on the sides of the boxes. Luckily, I don’t have that much stuff to move, and I’ll be moving some of the boxes in advance of the big stuff.
I’m not sure I like the computer scheme, because you wind up sitting at the computer rather than packing things. Maybe if I had more stuff I’d be more worried about it.
Better moving plan: before you move, sell EVERYTHING, and just buy new stuff at your destination. What you save on moving expenses, to say nothing of the hidden costs of stress, will more than cover the losses inherent in the strategy. If you can’t face running the moving sale, hire an auction company to come in and do it for you.
There will be some other savings, of course, resulting from the fact that you won’t actually replace everything. You’ll sell off a bunch of crap that you don’t really need anyway, and you won’t be buying new crap to replace it, at least not right away.
Obviously, you’ll have to make exceptions for irreplacable stuff like photo albums and family mementos. But if you can’t move all of that in one carload, you’ve become a prisoner of your possessions!!
We will be moving in a month or so, and are planning to follow misstee’s example. Whole room moving…much less stress. Move the unimportant stuff first, then move the rooms you use all together: kitchen, bath, bedroom. Then go back and pick up the leavings and pile them in the garage until I get around to throwing them away!
Well, as appealing as Whole Room Moving sounds, I’m not making 5 or 6 trips to Raleigh, even with the unlimited mileage. Driving a 15’ truck just isn’t that much fun. And as appealing as selling everything sounds, I just bought the bed a few months ago and would like to get some more use out of it, which requires a truck anyway And of course I’m a prisoner of my possessions. I like my stuff. That’s why I bought it. Having slept on the floor with nothing but a bagful of clothes, well, that’s not a state I aspire to return to.
I did a little test run of it yesterday and it worked pretty well. Load up a box, slap a label on it, lean over and type a few things in Excel. And there’s some humor in the “contents” section in random things like, “Mr. T Duck, Bobblehead Jesus, Candlesticks.”
Hey, are you me?? I still have boxes to unpack from moving two years ago. Of course, they’re all books. It amazes me how much room books take up in boxes. And I think they breed when they’re crammed together all alone in the dark. I still trying to figure out how when I boxed up all the books from my bookshelves (bedside, bathroom, underneath the couch, piles in the dining room), I wound up with sixteen more boxes of books than my shelves will hold.
Congrats for you! I’ll be moving in a month, so I’m all excited, too.
I recently sorted and repacked all the boxes o’ crap in our spare bedroom (aka big-ass closet).
Got colored construction paper, one color for each room and one for “random.” Wrote down the basic idea of what’s in each box (Books - horror, vampire. Books - Comics, horor. Books - Philosophy, history. Etc). It’d be more effective if Cody’d stop going through these boxes (none of which he touched in the past 2 years until I had them all labelled and taped closed. Bastard).
Of course moving from one small two bedroom apartment to another larger two bedroom apartment wasn’t so bad.
I also had the book problem. I’m buying a bookshelf tonight to start on those other boxes of books… plus the ones I’m inheriting from my mom and dad when they move next week. I will have everything ever written by King, (with a lot of first editions) but I also have 20 boxes to haul to the used bookstore and try to sell. They’re gonna run when they see me coming.
Our clothes went into garbage bags. You’re just going to dump everything out and wash it anyway (at least, we did… that truck was NASTY.)
Yea, but when I need those Super-Important Papers and everything’s still in boxes, I want to at least know what to look for.
I probably should’ve added this in my OP, but part of the reason for this is the large number of secondhand boxes we snagged from Geobabe and Unclebill, so they already have writing on them. I figured it’d be easier to look at a label and say “Huh, this goes in the living room”, then try and figure out whose handwriting is on the box.
And I’m purging my bookshelves, too. I have 5 or 6 boxes of books I’m trying to sell on Amazon or give away at the Geobills’ Housewarming Dopefest thing.
GMRyujin, which moving company are you using? Do you mind if I ask about how much it’s costing you? I need to move my household from Ohio to Florida in about a month or so. It would be nice to have some decent data.
