The Every Guy’s Guide: Make moving go smoothly
Colin Joliat 
There may be no task worse than having to pile everything you own into boxes, only to take them out of said boxes a day or two later. That’s right, I’m talking about moving. Having switched apartments four times in the past six years, I am unfortunately becoming a bit of an expert on the subject.
This year, I spent the 4th of July packing my life away. While at first glance that may seem un-American, the process made it abundantly clear that I have done my part to help stimulate the economy. Therein lays the problem when it comes to moving. After three years in an apartment, I managed to accumulate a ridiculous amount of stuff. Most of it was garbage, but when you live on the top of a four-floor walkup, even throwing stuff out becomes a challenge. Here are a few tips to help make your transition a little easier. While some may seem obvious, I have seen countless people ignore them, myself included.
Use Boxes, Not Bags
Most of us love stuffing our junk in boxes, but for some reason come moving time, guys abandon that method. Far too often I’ve seen people unloading trucks full of shopping bags from Nordstrom that a girlfriend or mom thought “would be just perfect for loading up the kitchen.” Unfortunately, while bags are abundant, they are also terrible for packing. You can fit significantly less in them, and they are nearly impossible to stack in a truck. On top of that, shopping bags are also a pain in the ass to carry. Obviously our girlfriends wouldn’t know that because we had to carry them the first time around as well, but you should know better.
Don’t Buy Boxes From A Store
If you purchase your boxes from U-Haul, Home Depot, or some sketchy site in the bowels of the Internet, you are likely to pay between $1.50 for a small box up to about $4 for a large one. This is highway robbery. Does anyone actually get robbed on a highway anymore? Seems like a stupid phrase. Regardless, it’s too much for a piece of cardboard bent and cut in a few places. Search Craigslist or Reddit on the first of the month before you are moving. Inevitably there will be people either giving away the boxes they just unpacked or selling them for $1 or less each. There’s nothing wrong with a used box. That just means it has experience.
Dump Trash Weeks In Advance
I’m not suggesting that you put away your sweet collection of bobble heads three weeks in advance, but start going through stuff. If you’ve lived in your place for a couple of years, you are bound to have accumulated quite a bit that will likely just be thrown out. Get this step out of the way well before you start packing. It’s much less of a burden to take an extra trip to the trash each day than it is twenty trips on your last. This is also a good time to go through your clothes and figure out what is no longer needed. You really don’t have use for four of the same t-shirt from that summer beach volleyball league. Take anything that doesn’t fit or you know for a fact you won’t wear more than once a year, throw it in a garbage bag, and drop it off at a Goodwill. Not only is it now out of your way, but you’ve also earned some karma and a tax write-off.
Pack Early And Often
There is no reason to wait until the 31st to actually pack everything. That would make it pretty tricky to clean your apartment well enough to get back your much needed security deposit. Eat out the last couple days so you can box up all of your kitchen supplies. While there isn’t a whole lot in there, it’s very time consuming to wrap each glass to avoid breakage. What seems like it should take an hour actually takes up several. You might as well get most of your clothing and bathroom stuff out of the way while you’re at it. Pack a bag as if you were going away for a few days, and live out of that until you make the move. Are you sensing a theme here yet? The more you can do in advance, the easier moving day will be. There is already enough to worry about on the final day, why make it any worse than it has to be.
Internet And TV Go Last
This is a no-brainer, but somehow at the end of the month people always tell me they can’t get me that super important document, of which I demand many, because they no longer have internet at home. What? Why would you do such a thing? How are you going to check out hot chicks or read witty articles without your internet? No, books are not a legitimate substitute. While you sit in your essentially packed and empty apartment, you are probably going to be pretty bored. Keep the TV and internet hooked up as well as some beer in the fridge until the last morning. Because you’ve followed my other advice, you now have time to kick back and relax instead of scrambling to find somewhere you can fit the stack of stupid trucker hats that you couldn’t possibly live without.
Pony Up For Movers
I know most people think they are fine to do the move on their own, but you aren’t. Movers might cost between $75 and $125 per hour, but they are worth their weight in Macallan 18. A few professionals can do in two hours what it would take you eight to accomplish. They know exactly how to wrap things, what angles are best, and how to carry more each trip. Then there’s the obvious advantage of you not having to carry anything. If you consider the fact that many provide the truck as well, it’s a pretty amazing deal. The sooner you get the actual moving done, the sooner you can start to unpack. Something about a new place just makes you want to immediately make it your own, and you aren’t going to feel like doing that for a couple days if you are exhausted from lugging boxes all over the place.
Moving is an awful task. No matter how much you plot and plan, it’s never going to be an enjoyable experience. If you employ these tips though, you can at least mitigate the misery. Your only other option is to never move again, as I declared on Twitter last week. If you have any tricks that have served you well, let the other Guyism loyalists know!
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