Moving and Adjusting

This past summer has been a crazy one for our family.  We put our house on the market and planned on moving when it sold.  In the midst of that, my husband got a new job.  Then, we got a contract.  But, just as we were moving things into storage... it fell through.  Then, we went on vacation and as we were coming back the contract went active and we had 2 1/2 weeks to move.

I came to remember the craziness, stress, and busyness of moving!  I also had forgotten how expensive it is to move!  What are the costs of moving?

It depends...

1.  Boxes and tape.

I was so blessed this time to have two friends who gave me a great amount of moving boxes that were in great shape!  For weeks, I made the rounds of local liquor stores to collect beer boxes--they're the perfect size for books so that they wouldn't be too heavy to move.  My family is full of readers, so we need lots of these boxes.  I packed at least 80 of these boxes for this move.

I bought 12 rolls of packing tape on Amazon.  It was the cheapest deal around--and it's cheaper than buying cheap duct tape.

I did also buy 1 roll of colored duct tape and put a small piece on each box that needed to go inside our home when we moved to separate them from the boxes that would be stored in the garage.


2.  Storage.

As we were getting ready to move the first time, we were going to get a pod... except that when we talked on the phone to the sales person, we realized we would have to get 3 or them.  3...  The glitch for us was that they were going to be placed on our parking pad which had wires over top of the pad and they weren't quite high enough for delivery of the pods.  They would also have to be delivered at different times, picked up and then another would be put in its place.

Complicated.

The cost of the pods was something we also hadn't realized.  It sounds inexpensive when you have 1 pod.  But, the pick up, storage, and delivery of the pods was going to cost us $1400 for 2 months.  That was with a 10% discount code that I found online.

I'm grateful we canceled the pods...
Because the contract fell through.

If we'd used pods, we would have been committed to the cost for a month.  There isn't any coming and going from that decision.

So, instead we decided to move things into self storage.  We chose a place nearby and began moving boxes.  Self Storage prorates the rent through the end of the month, but does not refund any unused portion of that month once it is paid for.  They will do automatic payments so that you don't miss a payment and lose your stuff!

When our contract fell through, we only lost $189 instead of $750 that would have been our POD investment.

In the end, when our house went under contract a month later, we opted to make choices about what to keep and get rid of.  What couldn't fit into our temporary home or garage are needed to find new homes--either with friends or through the Goodwill nearby via a donation.

3.  A Moving Truck.

When it came time for us to move, we rented a moving truck through Penske.  The choices we looked at were Uhaul and Penske.  They have different cost structures.  The cost breaks even at 100 miles.  More than 100 miles, Penske was the cheaper option.  But, if you can get the AAA discount with Penske, then Penske is cheaper after going only 52 miles.

4.  Movers (or Friends and Family)

I live with pain.  My husband and I knew we needed help.  One of my friends who moved earlier this summer hired movers to help them.  We have a church family that we sent an email out to--to ask for help.  Their help was such a blessing!  We had 15 people show up Saturday morning to help us move everything into the truck and had 8 people show up on the other end to help us take everything out.  We could never have done it without them!  Because of the help of our friends, we were able to return the truck in less than 24 hours!

5.  Food

This is one that I had forgotten about.  One of the biggest gifts we were given the day before we moved was a meal!  A friend brought us dinner-- a dinner that was enough for us to eat on Saturday after we had moved in.

I bought bagels, cream cheese, coffee, and orange juice for workers at the beginning.  On the other end, I bought subway sandwiches for lunch.

But, there's another extra cost for food--meals that we needed to eat out because our home took 5 days to unpack and for trips while we were looking for a new place to live and had to eat out.

6.  The in-between

I've discovered that everyone takes a different amount of time to unpack.  Some things go missing or can't be found for a little while.  The trick is figuring out what you need to replace in the meantime and what you need to make do without until you find it!


Moving is complicated and full of different costs a long the way... these are the ones that I've been learning about!