So in the previous installments, I talked about our experience in finding a house and getting it insured. The next big action would be to actually do the move. This was something I had been low-key planning for a few years so I was hoping that it would go relatively smoothly.

Spoiler: it was still chaotic and tiring.

Overall I think this move went fairly well given just how big of a move it was for us.

Movers vs DIY

This was a tough one: in the past, we’ve always DIY’d our moves but they’ve always been relatively simple moves - down the street or a couple of highway exits away. This move was about an hour away and so, we did consider movers. Our options were:

Professional movers
Via containers (like Big Steel Box or PODS)
Via U-Haul or a ‘better’ option like Enterprise
Via places like Home Depot Truck Rental
Slow trickle-move via our own vehicles

At the end of the day, professional movers, we felt, were just a bit too pricey (likely due to covid); realistically we only had two super tricky things to move (the computer walls!) and that was only due to the sheer awkwardness of the basement where they were deployed. The shipping container route sadly wasn’t an option since we needed a certain amount of clearance to drop off the [large] bin (and we were a few feet short) and there was an acute shortage on bin availability for most providers.

Looking at the traditional truck rental options, the U-Haul route becomes super expensive since you’re paying for mileage and it adds up. With the more premium options like Enterprise, while you’re still paying for mileage, you do get access to some better trucks.

In the end, we settled on a big truck with a lift gate from Enterprise; due to scheduling issues, we followed up with a Home Depot van rental as well. More on that later…

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Prepwork

After our last move, I made it a goal to make this move a lot easier. I had three main approaches to try and make the move more organized

Everything I built would be modular and, if needed, could be disassembled
Bins, bins, and more bins. Over the years, whenever there were sales on bins (usually, ‘back to school’), I would pick up a handful of bins here and there. The nice thing about bins is that they stack easily — and while moving, we’re often limited by effective use of vertical space rather than by weight
Labels! I started with single-line, basic labels but I planned to move to a label-printer before we moved - this lets you print out a basic contents list for each bin

Since most of our stuff isn’t particularly heavy, the overall plan here was to leverage the stacking of bins to transfer the bulk of stuff and then relying on the labels to make unpacking and random-access easier. By using bins, there will be ‘wasted space’ — but this is a good thing, it allows for random-access in and out of a bin without having to spend time meticulously putting things back into the bin when done.

Over the years, we settled on six different bins:

Tuff Store 63L Nesting Tote. We bought this as a cheap-bin option - going for sheer quantity and for things that don’t need a ‘heavy duty’ bin
Rubbermaid Roughneck, 68L. This is our baseline ‘heavy duty’ bin
Rubbermaid Roughneck, 37L. This occupies the same floor footprint as the bigger bin, but comes up about half as high - great as an in-between bin
Rubbermaid Roughneck, 11L. This is a super compact bin - perfect for all sorts of tech doodads
Plano Sportsman Trunk, 102L. This half-wheeled trunk is perfect for camping equipment or for items that need a bit more heavy-duty. The dimensions are good for longer items as well

In total, we probably have closer to 100 bins since we use many of them to keep things organized.

For years, I would just have a basic label as a title for the bin because that was all I needed — I knew where all my stuff was: I knew which bin it should be in and which room that bin would be in so it was just a matter of finding the bin. Of course, during a move, everything is now everywhere so I finally bought a label printer (Brother QL-800) to help tame this mess: I could now make labels that provided a title for the bin as well as a highlight of what the contents of a bin were as well as what room the bin should go to (handy for moving!)

From our previous move, we took extensive measurements and photos during our previous visit(s) and put together graph-paper models of all of the rooms and figure out where to put all of our furniture. Nicole gets all the credit for this - and doing this on graph paper with paper-placeholders for our furniture allows for the planning process to be knocked out very easily. Due to the pandemic, we only had 30-minutes for the viewings so we needed to divide-and-conquer to capture all of the data needed to map out the house

For a few months leading up to the big day, we made an effort to sell off as stuff we weren’t keen on moving - a few of my benchtop and smaller power tools as well as selling the fishtank(s) and the fish. Stuff that was left-over was donated — there’s no point in moving what you’re not going to make use of! We got lucky and were able to sell our shed to the neighbors too — knock down the fence (which was coming down anyways) and brute force the [fully-assembled] shed one yard over! Of course this now meant that all the stuff that was in the shed would have to stage in the garage…

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A 'Day One' Bag

I think every guide on moving will suggest that you have a “day one” bag/box that consists of all of the essentials you think you’ll need so you' won’t need to scramble to figure out where everything in the midst of the chaos of moving. We already had some coverage of the basic day-one needs from our day-to-day life:

emergency go-bag
overnight toiletries bag (it’s a good idea to cram a change of underwear/socks in these too!)
a toolbox with all the tools you’ll think you’ll need

Some of the things you’ll want to consider are, by category

Cleaning: having a bin dedicated to cleaning (and laundry) supplies and equipment; things like garbage/compost bags would go here too! Don’t forget garbage/recycle/compost bins and buckets as well
Power: power bars, USB chargers, power banks, USB cables, extension cords, power tool chargers, power tool batteries, AA/AAA/9V batteries/chargers etc.
Clothing: a small carry-on suitcase can go in the makeshift bedroom so you it’s one less thing to think about
Food: pre-make some foods before the move so you don’t have to think about cooking (or alternatively, figure out our pizza options!)
Lights: if you plan on (or need to) replace the lights in your place, do it as soon as you can, so you’re not stumbling around in a poorly lit space that you’re not familiar with
Tools: shop scissors/knife, drill, basic multi-bit screwdriver, level, painters tape (to mark things), measuring tape, stud finder, electrical outlet tester, pliers, wrenches, teflon/duct/electrical/packing tape etc.
Office Supplies: sticky notes, pen/marker, label maker (and refills), ziplock bags
Comfort: fans, heaters, small lamps, alarm clock, first-aid supplies, replacement air/water filters

Some larger/luxury/convenience items you might want to consider; some of which may be motivated by things you might need to do during your move:

A laptop - sometimes it’s just easier to book/research things in a new place on a computer rather than a mobile device; this is also important if you have a limited time off and are going back to work during (or shortly after) the move
Vacuums (including wet-dry vacs), a leaf blower or compressor can be handy as well
Ladders, step-stools - you may need a ladder to help with replacing bulbs or to replace the batteries in the smoke detectors (who knows when they were previously replaced/recharged); you may need it to reach the reset/learn button on a garage door opener as well
Folding tables: this gives you ‘free’ space to stack things further; pair this with folding chairs and you can have a basic dining table ready to go which can be a big morale booster
Locks: in our case, we pre-bought replacement deadbolts and had them keyed-alike in advance
Seasonal: snow removal or lawncare equipment & supplies

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Our moving strategy

Our moving plan was broken down into four phases

Pre-move: using our vehicles to move stuff we’ll need right away and/or stuff that is delicate
The big-trucks: the plan was to have a lift-gate truck for one day and a non-liftgate truck the next day. With the big trucks, we would pair the big truck with my pickup (might as well); the priority for the liftgate-truck was to move all the stuff that was impractical to heave in and out of a pickup truck due to bulk
Leftover moves: after the big-truck day, the only stuff remaining should be movable with a pickup; after all our stuff was moved out, we could come back to leave the old place in a decent state and close off this chapter in our lives
Moving into the cargo container: this would hold the contents of the shop for a month or two

We had some plans to do some retrofitting to the garage to turn it into a more permanent workspace starting a few weeks after moving so, instead of temporarily moving all my shop things into the garage just to then have to move it out a few weeks later (all to save a couple weeks worth of rental feels), it just made sense to just move the shop directly into the shipping container from the get go. We didn’t know what time of day we would get the keys so we booked the delivery of the bin a few days after taking possession so we staged the shop items in the garage initially.

[1] Pre-Move

Phase one starts the day we got the house which is a few days before we get the big trucks; we wanted to get a few things done before we started brute-force streaming bins in:

Take initial photos of the house. The house is almost certainly never going to be this empty again so this is a perfect opportunity to document the house, inside and out with in high-resolution, with stupid-wide lenses.
Get the house in a clean state before - you know, before we make a mess of it! We got pretty lucky, the house was handed off in a fairly clean state
Have the kitchen, bath and a temporary sleeping setup all migrated
Change the locks, verify all of the keys, verify the appliances [still] work

We got into a pretty good flow — in the time it would take me to go back, load and come back, Nicole would finished unpacking the previous stuff. Some things were semi-unpacked (i.e., moved to the intended room, unboxed and placed in piles) since they were dependant on other things (i.e., closets, shelves etc.) but other things were more thoroughly unpacked (i.e., kitchen, bath, laundry).

By the end of the first day we had all the kitchen cupboards and drawers unpacked, the bathroom (and related supplies) migrated and we had a futon setup in one of the rooms. Pretty successful for one day!

[2] Big-Truck Day

Big truck day was exciting - we got lucky and scored a free ‘upgrade’ from a 20ft truck to a behemoth 26ft truck. The big selling point of this rental was the liftgate: with this, we could roll all the heavy stuff onto the liftgate (at ground level) and have it lifted into the box of the truck.

The lift-gate was what made this move even remotely possible - we ended up taking two trips with this huge truck. The first trip covered the majority of the bulky items that we had already staged in the garage; the second trip was much rougher (since we were also tired from moving all day). Thankfully, we had some help from a buddy of mine and Nicole rallied the neighbors to lend a hand as well.

Apparently we were feeling pretty good after our first load so we actually cancelled the reservation for the second big-truck… While this ended up fine, it made for a pretty intense one-day mega-move.

[3] Leftover Moves

But we realized we still had a bunch of stuff left to move: we poked around but there weren’t any trucks available on short notice (nothing that wasn’t super expensive at least). We did however, catch a super lucky break in the form of a Home Depot cargo van rental. The pricing model for the rental is definitely targeted at around-town:

90minutes: $24.95 + $5 for every 15-minutes after that
4-hours: $74.95
Daily rate: $99.95

The magic sauce is that all of the vehicles come with unlimited kilometers which makes this actually one of the cheapest rentals (by-day) for intercity moves. We lucked out and got a 9ft van which was perfect for moving some of the slightly longer/awkward things leftover from the shop (all things that I could have moved with the pickup, but man, it was so much easier with the extra length of the van). Again, we split up: Nicole got the [old] house sorted out and checked to make sure we didn’t leave anything behind while I disassembled the remaining shop fixtures.

[4] Cargo container

During big-truck-day, we were mostly concerned with making the most of our limited time with the lift-gate truck so we dumped most things straight into the garage rather than into the shipping container. Now we moved everything into the shipping container until some of the garage upgrades were completed. We ended up packing the container to the brim and even overflowed into the shed and into the house. It’ll be fun to see how I get all this stuff the garage long term.

For us, the pricing difference between the 10ft and 20ft cargo container is so insignificant that it just makes sense to get the 20ft — make sure to book this as soon as you can (think months) - we got lucky with ours but you definitely don’t want to be stressing about it. As for deciding on which cargo-container option to go with:

The 20ft cargo container that we got requires 70ft of clearance (in the direction of the bin) to deploy; other specific brands may vary a little bit, but make sure you triple check there is enough room on your driveway to the far side of the street for the truck to deploy
Different types of bins may deploy differently. For example, when POD containers are moved, the bin remains level (so you just need to pack things so they don’t fall over); with the Big Steel Box, the loading process has the bin rolled on a slight incline - so you’ll need to make sure your tie-down game is on point
Different bins have different construction so if you’re concerned about theft and/or weather resistance, make sure to take that into consideration
Be sure to ask about the lip of the container you’re working with - the Big Steel Bin we ordered had an 8” lip. Thankfully I had a couple sheets of OSB/Plywood and some 2x4s to make a sturdy makeshift ramp

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By the numbers!

*I don’t think I can go back to a non-liftgate truck after this….*

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Reflection

While it was a bit of a hell-week moving, obviously, we made it!

Overall, there were a lot of wins and good decisions

Taking a full week off was a good idea (we barely fit into the that week actually)
Labeling bins and being bin-centric worked out well
Some of the big boxes we kept came in clutch
The Home Depot van rental with unlimited kilometers was a lucky find
And of course, the lift-gate truck made this all possible
It was a huge win to throw the cabinets to my miter saw station onto a dollies — moving them was just a matter of rolling them on and off the truck

If I could go back and improve things:

Get more bins! Shockingly, we ran out of bins
Reserve the big lift-gate truck for three-days to avoid stressing out about trying to cram everything in one day
I would consider renting the Home Depot van during the pre-move phase (just for one day); the sheer capacity jump compared to Nicole’s small car would have made good use of that time
It wouldn’t have been a bad idea to rent a (traditional) storage unit in town — move a bunch of bins and stuff that we wouldn’t need right away before the big day

That being said, if we ever more from here, I think we’ve finally reached the point where professional movers make sense.

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Buying a House, Part 3

Quick Links

Movers vs DIY

Prepwork

A 'Day One' Bag

Our moving strategy

By the numbers!

Reflection

Floating King Bed Frame

A Dive into Security Cameras, Part 1