Save Money on Your Move By Getting Rid of These 3 Things

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Moving can be an expensive endeavor, so you’re probably looking for ways to save money. 

Little things, like tracking down free cardboard boxes or using t-shirts instead of costly packing paper to protect your breakables can add up to a nice wad of extra cash in your pocket.

But to really save big on your move? To put it simply: have less stuff you need to haul. 


Why Fewer Things Means a Lower-Cost Move

There are a few reasons why the amount of items and the size of what you’re taking with you during a move has a big impact on the money you save.

  • Less stuff takes less time to move, so if you’re hiring moving labor, it won’t take them as long to load and unload your belongings. And that lowers the final bill.
  • Less stuff weighs less overall, which means if you hire a full-service mover, your move will cost less since they charge by how much a load weighs, or if you rent or use your own truck, you’ll get way better gas mileage.
  • Less stuff takes up less space, so you can rent a smaller, less expensive truck. If you are going the portable storage container route, you’ll be able to rent a smaller one, or fewer of them. Either way, you’re spending less cash.

The 3 Things That Cost the Most To Transport

As a mover with decades of experience, I know there are three things that make the biggest difference in lightening your load to make your move cost a lot less. And getting rid of them come with the added benefit of giving yourself the opportunity to make your life in your new home feel like a fresh start.

1. Get Rid of as Much Food as Possible

Simple in theory but not necessarily easy in practice, clearing out your kitchen can save you oodles of time in addition to saving space and weight for your move.

What kinds of food really make a difference?

There’s a proper way to clean out a pantry. First consider all the perishable goods, such as produce, dairy and condiments taking up space in your fridge.

Yes, it’s typically common sense to toss or use perishables beforehand, since they can spoil so easily. But, take stock of all your frozen foods too. Frozen stuff doesn’t do well being stuffed in a box and driven hundreds of miles any more than perishables don’t, even if you shove all that frozen stuff into coolers with ice packs (which will add a ton more weight, figuratively and maybe literally). 

 

@hireahelper How I packed up my fridge and pantry to prep for moving day. #moving #packing #packingakitchen #fridge #pantry #kitchen #packingapantry #packingafridge #movingtips #packinghelp #howtopack #packingtips #movingday ♬ original sound – HireAHelper

 

For nonperishable goods, there are dry goods, such as pasta, rice, cereal, and couscous, and canned foods, such as vegetables or sauces. All nonperishables often wind up costing more to ship or haul than to buy them in the first place. Even with the current bout of inflation, it might not be worth it to pack up and transport all that Chef Boyardee.

When it comes to food, you should really only bring what you’re eating immediately during the trip, or what absolutely can’t be replaced, such as very expensive spices, hard-to-get foodstuffs from other countries, or rare bottles of alcohol.

Do I really just toss it all? That seems wasteful!

There are ways to get rid of all that food without throwing it in the garbage. For instance, you can donate all your dried and canned food to your local food pantry through an organization like Move For Hunger— they’re a charity that literally exists for this exact problem.

 

“The national van lines have a waiver specifically for pressboard furniture, releasing the movers/company from liability for damage, because it’s pretty much guaranteed to get damaged.”

 

You can also throw a “raid my kitchen” party for your friends. Give people who help you pack and move first dibs on your unopened alfredo sauce and spices, then invite anyone else to come by and help themselves to what’s left. No salesmanship, no pressure. Just a bit of fun. And a lighter load.

I’ve packed hundreds of homes, and the kitchen is always one of the most time-consuming rooms to tackle. Free yourself from this cumbersome task and do away with the cost of moving it all.

2. Go Crazy and Get Rid of Your Furniture

If you’ve got a lot of really nice or sentimental furniture, like an antique dining table handed down from great-great-grandma, feel free to skip this section. If you’re lugging the kind of worn brown sofa I did for a dozen moves in my turbulent post-college years, then read on.

If it’s big, bulky, or made of pressboard, better leave it behind

save space move
If you still have that cheap, “good enough” furniture from your student days, a move is a good time to leave it behind and upgrade

Large, unwieldy items take up a lot of space, right? Most sofas, desks, dressers, entertainment center units and aging mattresses can mean a bigger rental truck or an additional portable container, which translates into a much higher cost for your move. Particularly if your larger items are getting up there in the years, consider the money-saving merits of donating or selling them.

See prices for local moving labor. Read real customer reviews. Easily book your help online.

Other items you might want to abandon are pieces made of pressboard, which is basically glued-together wood pulp covered with a thin veneer of fake solid wood (think IKEA). Bookcases, desks, and pretty much anything else made of the stuff will crack and crumble in transit, often leaving you with a useless pile of wood scraps at your new home. 

The national van lines have a waiver specifically for pressboard furniture, releasing the movers/company from liability for damage, because it’s pretty much guaranteed to get damaged.

So what do I sit on in my new home?

Giving away or tossing out your furniture does mean you probably need to buy new replacements, and that can certainly be expensive.

 

“When it comes to food, you should really only bring what you’re eating immediately during the trip, or what absolutely can’t be replaced, such as very expensive spices, hard-to-get foodstuffs from other countries, or rare bottles of alcohol.”

 

offerup appA great alternative is to hunt down secondhand stuff that is still in good shape. Offerup is a great app for finding (and listing) stuff free and cheap in your new neighborhood. Though used, it will feel new to you in your new home and make you really feel like you’ve begun a new chapter.

Even if, in the end, buying replacements ends up costing a bit more than what you save on a smaller rental truck (with better gas mileage), there’s something satisfying about snagging a cool new living room for your new place on the cheap.

3. Go Even Crazier and Get Rid of Your Car

save space move

This one is a tougher call than parting with your memory-filled sofa. It also might sound a bit crazy. But if you’re considering shipping your car to your new home, hold on and hear me out.

While the cost of shipping a car varies, shipping it over a long distance can run you well over a thousand bucks. If you believe keeping your car is worth the expense, you’ll get no argument from me.

But if you’re not driving your dream mobile, or if you really want to make a clean break, toss around the idea of selling your car (a bit under blue book value if that helps you unload it by move day). Then take that cash, add it to what you just saved yourself by not shipping that old clunker, and find something comparable or better on the other end. 

See prices for local moving labor. Read real customer reviews. Easily book your help online.

A Twist on an Old Piece of Advice

One final note involves the time-worn adage that says, “If you haven’t worn it or used it in a year, get rid of it.”

I don’t necessarily agree with this. I use stuff every day that I would be just as happy without, like old plates, the swivel office chair with the faint, unidentifiable stain on the seat, and yes, a few dozen t-shirts that are slowly disintegrating.

Instead of gauging the worth of something by the last time I used it, I go by a different saying:  “True wealth is not accumulation. It is selection.”

When moving, be choosy. Be willing to let go of stuff. You’ll make it easier on yourself as well as your wallet.

And you may end up with a new life that looks and feels better than the one you left behind.

7 Embarrassing Lessons I Learned While Moving People

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Learning to be a good mover is not something you can get from a book. Like riding a bike, playing the piano and getting your black belt – like so many things, really – we all have to learn how to move stuff by going out to the job and getting to it.

And as with just about anything, it involves making mistakes.

This month I want to share with you seven lessons I learned during my earliest days on the job. Lessons learned both through the mistakes of others and through my own errors. They made me feel stupid and embarrassed, but nevertheless taught me things I needed to know if I wanted to stay on in this business.

#1. The nicer the furniture, the more likely you’ll damage it.

This isn’t some sort of karmic law. This is pure woodworking and physics.

The finest dressers and desks have drawers that slide out nice and smoothly – meaning you only need to tip that piece so far before gravity grabs hold of those drawers and start pulling them out and onto the floor. Quality furniture also (usually) means good, solid wood. And it’s heavy. Drawers will gain speed fast and hit the floor hard. Armoire doors, once they start to swing open, can come down so hard they put cracks in themselves; if they don’t bang against the floor, they can end up playing “irresistible force meets immovable object” with their hinges.

Yes, I’ve seen all this firsthand. A lot of it happened on a local move during my first week as a mover. I don’t know about the other guys on that crew, but that was the first and last time I let something like that happen.

Protip: Pad-wrapping items like dressers and armoires can obviously keep all those drawers and doors in place. So can a layer of shrink wrap. But if you prefer not to pad-wrap or shrink wrap those big pieces until you get them out the front door another option is using those big movers’ rubber bands, which are easy to put on, easy to adjust (by knotting up and tying off any slack) and totally economical since you can use them for years.

Extra advice: Gravity works on all kinds of furniture, not just the most expensive stuff!

#2. Sitting in the passenger seat does not mean you get to take a break from helping.

Unfortunately, one guy I worked with didn’t seem to understand this. “Watch that side,” I told him as I began backing half-blind into a slot between two other box trucks. “Aw-right,” he said, glancing lazily at the side view mirror before letting his eyes glaze back over.

I suppose it was my fault. I shouldn’t have taken it for granted that he was going to keep watching that side for me and warn me when I was about to sideswipe the truck parked on his side. Which, of course, he didn’t. And he didn’t get socked with a bill for the damage either.

Protip: This “help your driver” rule is always in effect on the road, because so are blind spots. When your driver is pulling up to the curb along a tree-lined residential street, pay attention not only to how close the tires are getting to the curb, but also how close the top of the truck might be coming to any big fat tree branches. Trust me, tree branches can do some serious damage.

#3. Don’t blindly trust a dog or its owner.

“He’s real friendly,” the customer with the mixed-breed said. “But I’ll put him out back so he doesn’t get in your way.” That seemed fair enough to all of us.

He was a quiet pup, actually, and after a while, I’d totally forgotten about him. I figure so did one of the other guys by the time he went out back to take care of the patio chairs. From the living room was where I heard the barking and the shouting, and I was walking through the kitchen when my fellow mover busted through the back door, cussing and bleeding in three places.

Protip: Quiet dogs are still dogs. With teeth.

#4. If you put things out of the way, remember where you put them.

After moving non-stop for six hours, our three-man crew was finally done with the unload. All we had to do was have the customer sign off on the inventory sheets.

“Looks like we’re missing something, fellas,” he said, showing us the lone unchecked box on his bingo sheet.

On the inventory, it just said “screw box” – which was exactly what I wanted to do. But the four of us – the crew plus the customer – spent the next half an hour looking for a screw box, not sure what one was even supposed to look like. Walking through the garage a fourth time, I looked over at the customer’s big old rolling tool chest and the sliding compartment doors at the bottom. Inside, to everyone’s relief, was a small PBO half-filled with nuts and bolts and washers and flanges and… yup. Screws.

Protip: Keep sticky notes and a marker in your pocket for anything that needs special denotation. That way, an out of the way item will be clearly visible and explained. A lot can be forgotten during a five-hour move, trust me.

#5. Pressboards can’t really be pressed.

During my first week as a mover, I was introduced to a pressboard entertainment unit in the customer’s living room. It held a big TV, stereo equipment, a VCR (this was 1996). When we got it cleared off and picked it up, it immediately started to wobble. I could feel the thing getting progressively looser as the lead guy and I eased it as best we could down the apartment building’s stairwell.

Out on the truck, the lead guy pulled out something called a ratchet strap. There I learned that when you introduce a ratchet strap to a piece of pressboard furniture, the ratchet strap will waste no time crushing that piece of pressboard furniture to pieces.

Protip: When confronted with a piece of pressboard furniture, give the customer two choices: a piece of paper called a Pressboard (Particle Board) Waiver that releases the moving company from liability for damage to a piece of furniture that shouldn’t be moved, or a piece of paper that says “FREE”. Read this discussion on MovingScam.com for more on particle/pressboard waivers.

#6. You know that the name is painted on the side of the truck, right?

One day, one of my fellow crew guys and I were asked to go help another van line agency handle a job in Manhattan. My buddy and I sat in the cramped space behind them, our knees pinned against our chests for the 90-minute ride into the city.

Granted, driving in Manhattan can suck. Driving a 26’ box truck around Manhattan is brutal. It takes patience. It takes nerves of steel. Our driver for the day had neither.

At one point there were three lanes being squeezed into two. New Yorkers generally have a grasp of the concept of merging though evidently, they don’t seem to like it. And, well, the driver let everybody on that ride know from out the window.

Protip: Most people on the road can both hear you AND read the name on the side of your truck.

#7. Shrink wrap comes in rolls, but you can’t reroll it.

“Hand me that shrink wrap, Kevin,” my buddy said from the back door of the box truck. Hands full (with what I don’t remember) I gave the shrink wrap at my feet a push with my boot and sent it rolling across the floor of the truck toward my buddy – and the boss, who had just materialized out of nowhere.

“Don’t EVER do that!” he barked in his usual intimidating way.” You know how much a roll of that stuff costs? You get one little rock in that plastic and the entire roll is shot! Where’s your head?!”

I wouldn’t say the whole entire roll would be shot. I wouldn’t say anything – not to that guy’s face. But he was right. Get even a small nick or cut or bit of debris in that plastic and it’ll drive you nuts the way it comes apart next time you try to use it. Money down the drain.

Protip: When someone asks you to hand them the shrink wrap, do just that.

Got any of your own lessons to share?

We know some of you have been around a while – long enough to have some good stories of your own about the hard lessons you’ve learned. We’d love for you to share them, so all of us can learn the easy way what you guys have learned the hard way.

Which brings me to one final tip.

Admit your mistakes. Spell them out to your team when they happen. This way you’ll be helping people avoid doing the same thing down the road.


Illustrations by Marlowe Dobbe
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