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Retiring in a few months and planning on moving to a smaller place in a warmer part of the country. Would like to know what your experiences are moving furniture, pets, and yourselves. Any mistakes to avoid? Any ways to save money? Please share.
Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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pets and plants usually determines that you will drive, but... if pets are small enough they can fly.
Depends how far / your desire, ability.
options:
Moving company ~ $5000 for partial load
Rent a moving truck and tow your car (Or have a friend / hired person drive the truck and you fly or drive)
PODS (for small amount of stuff)
Freight (ABF) company will drop a trailer and U load
Some smaller companies with rent a u-haul truck and drive it round trip. (with their hired drivers)
Can ship you car $1000, but you may want a different car in a new location, you will definitely want a different car if your current car has lived in a rust state. central TX, and AZ, NM, CA, non-mtn NV have rust free cars.
I've gone from TN > IA, IA > TN, TN > IN, IN > TN, within the last six years.
For a large home move, you'll probably need the largest truck available. Definitely purge before you move - there is nothing worse than packing with boxes upon boxes of items you haven't used in years or are materially worthless. If something is large/bulky and cheap to replace, junk it. If it's old and has little value (I had a couch from the 70s that was ugly but was going to replace anyway), junk it.
For instance, I had hundreds of music CDs in their cases. I imported all of that music to my computer then sold those CDs at a local music store. Those CDs consumed two large storage totes, and they were so heavy the plastic totes would flex. There's no need to bring something like that back. Books are another item that, while nice to have, often have little value, are heavy, and take up a lot of space.
Doing it yourself with a truck is the cheapest option. You could also hire help to pack and load, drive it yourself, and unload it at the end. A large house with a lot of stuff professionally moved is likely to run well over $10,000.
A few years ago, we moved from New Jersey to South Carolina. I've shared the details of that move on here before (some funny -- and some not so much). I'll summarize here...
Moving Companies treat all you worldly treasures as "Weight & Volume" and nothing is considered Fragile. On a long distance move, they may off-load your stuff from the first truck and re-load it as part of a 3-house move to save fuel costs.
Hence, Rule #1 states "Do Not Let the Movers Touch Anything of Value" No Glassware, China, Musical Instruments (a Piano, maybe). And positively No Jewelry, Collectibles, or Cash. We were taking 2 separate Cars down south, so we had space for a lot of that stuff.
In NJ, the Mover made a big show of keeping a log sheet and putting a sticker on everything they put on their truck. When they off-loaded in SC, our stuff flew off the truck helter-skelter with no regard for their log sheet.
Dynamite wouldn't have emptied that truck any quicker....it just would have made smaller pieces !!
Furniture is simply Weight & Volume and costly to move. You're probably going to buy new when you get to your Destination anyway. Sell the old Couch on Craigslist, or Donate it and take the Deduction.
Our Pet is a Pomeranian, and a jumpier Dog you've never seen. But we got some Happy Pills from the Vet and he made the trip successfully.
I think your biggest savings will come from coordinating your 1st night in your new place. Every night in a Hotel is money out the window. Try and minimize that expense.
Good Luck with it....Have you picked out your Destination yet ??
How much do you have? First give away what ever you do not need. If you can think of buying furniture in your new area.
Assume you have a car. Drive it. Maybe pull a small trailer for clothing.
I would look at pods. Be sure you can use then at both ends of your trip - home owners rules etc.
In some communities they do not allow moving vans, trucks trailers on certain days and after certain hours.
If using pods you may have a time limit on how long you have to load and unload.
If you will need a bank open a local account by mail if your bank is not in your new area.
Start writing up your change of address notices now. Hold until you have a new address and a move date. This can be more work than you think as you will have some mail that will be annual. Be sure the PO is still forwarding your mail when tax season arrives - Jan through April. Some can be done on line.
If you drive l would use coupons you get at road side rests for motels. Also consider registering with the hotel changes for their perks.
Some credit cards give you an extra 5% for meals or gas. Maybe get one of these cards.
Check car insurance and homeowners insurance and get quotes. Check driver license and car registration requirements and locations to go to. Any drivers test or questions? Probably eye exams as a minimum.
disclaimer: I'm still in the middle of the process.
1.) Packing will take much longer than you think it will.
Something that I though would take two, maybe three weeks has turned into two, most likely three months! At first, I sorted. What to take? What to trash? What to donate? What to shred? Now . . . I'm just putting everything into boxes and will sort it all out when I get to my new home.
2.) Will be self-moving.
Have heard way too many 'horror stories' about damage to personal items by moving companies, so will be packing and moving myself. If anything is broken, I have only myself to blame.
In an attempt to make the move 'easier', I'm sticking with about five box sizes. Figure the boxes will stack more efficiently in a moving van than if I just snagged boxes from here or there. Most of the boxes are coming from Walmart, the rest from U-Haul. Small boxes for heavy stuff, bigger boxes for everything else. Largest box size I'm using is 16x16x15. Everything that won't fit will be loose, or in their original box.
3.) Only taking about half current furniture.
New house is about 1,100 square feet smaller than my current house and has different cabinetry wood, so will not be taking all existing furniture. The only stuff I'll be taking is the master bedroom set, bookcases, easy chair, sofa, and piano. Haven't decided on formal dining room set. It was my mom's, so has a bit of an emotional attachment. However, it wouldn't match anything. I'll think on it more before deciding.
Need to figure out what to do with my universal gym. It's pretty expensive, but the clubhouse of my new 55+ community has one already. It would be a royal pain to disassemble it, and I highly doubt anyone else could put it back together again. I'll have to think long and hard on this one.
4.) Labeling of boxes.
I've come up with a simple system of labeling my boxes. They all look the same, so I needed some way to discriminate them. I use a one or two alpha-character code followed by a sequential digit.
In a computer file, I label the boxes first with a single letter, based on it's size. "A" for the little, tiny boxes with really heavy stuff, (e.g., coins, ammunition). "B" for the next size boxes that have heavy things, like books. And so forth.
On each box, in one upper-right corner I use a felt-tip marker to write the code. For example, I'll have "BK1", "BK2" ... for "books", with it's sequential number. So, I'll know that MB23 is the 23rd box of Master Bedroom stuff. I'll make an entry on the computer file that MB23 includes 'pullover summer shirts'.
I'm hoping that when I unpack the truck, I'll easily know which box goes into which room and by referencing the computer file, I'll know what the box contains. I don't expect to unbox very quickly, but if I need anything, I'll know which box to open to find it. Hopefully.
My advice is to avoid loading and unloading. As mentioned above downsize aggressively. Then save money by packing your items yourself. Then let a moving company do the heavy lifting. If you downsize enough there are other options such as shipping a pod that you pack yourself.
We moved from California to North Carolina about 12 years ago. We took a lot of our stuff but did give some to neighbors and some to family. It cost us $17K to move all of our crap. That did not include the cost to ship both of our cars. Probably 80% of the stuff has not been used in our new home and sat for a long time in our garage (we could not even park in there because it was crammed with stuff) and was (and still is) packed away in our attic.
So like others said, get rid of it and start fresh in your new home :-)
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