As my regular reader(s) will know, we moved across town a week ago, we are well on our way to getting settled in, so I thought I would do some post-game analysis - things we did well, things we could have done better. Here is some background on the constraints we were working under when we did this:
- We are both poor college students, and class started for the semester on this past Monday (the one after our moving weekend)
- Our lease on the old apartment is up at the end of the month
Our decisions:
- Schedule for sanity - We were going to move before class started, because moving while class is ongoing would have been hairy, so having to pay rent on two apartments for a period of time was an acceptable cost in order to maintain our sanity.
- Clean and move separately - We wanted at least a two-weekend overlap on the leases, so we could move on one weekend and finish cleaning the old apartment on the other weekend.
Stuff we did right:
- Start packing early - We got a lot of packing done before the move started, most of our stuff was in boxes when we were ready to go
- Free Boxes - We did not pay a penny for boxes, between the ones we already had on hand and a big bunch that we got from a listing on the Free section on Craigslist
- Enlisted the help of friends and family
- They helped with physical labor - moving furniture, boxes, out of our old second floor apartment into a first floor apartment
- Dogsitting - My parents babysat (dogsat) our dog at their home, so he wouldn’t be underfoot or super-stressed out while we were moving (took him to their house in the morning, and brought him to the new apartment that night)
Stuff we did not do right:
- Underestimated the number of boxes we needed - always get more than you think you will need. It is better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
- Did not call UHaul early enough to reserve a truck - I spent a good deal of time calling all of the UHaul stores around town till I found one that had the size of truck that we were looking for - this was the Wednesday before the Saturday that we were going to move.
Overall though, this move went very smoothly and we are (slowly) getting settled in and unpacked in the new apartment.
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