useful moving & shipping advice

Ok so you find that you have to move house and guess what you have little or no money, what do you do? Well you will just have to move yourself right? Well firstly you really need to think long and hard about this because unless you have previous experience lots of hands to help out or precious few stuff, this is not the task for the faint of heart.

Bear in mind that moving is in the top five (5) activities that people hate and find extremely stressful. (That’s one of the reasons we created a convenient bundle of services to reduce your level of stress when moving)

So that being said, ok you still don’t have any choice you are still determined to do this yourself huh? Well we can help you by advising you as to some of the common mistakes that the do-it -yourselfer make and how to avoid them.

so let’s look at some of the common mistakes. Bear in mind though that they are not in any particular order and is by no means exhaustive,  let get started.

Mistake #1

Leaving all our packing until last minute

It’s common for most people to procrastinate on almost everything so it’s not uncommon that when it becomes necessary to move house that you will be bitten by the procrastination bug and choose to leave your packing for the last minute.- big mistake! Whereas if you were using a moving company which offers packing services then it wouldnt be a major problem because they have the manpower ,boxes packing materials etc well that’s what they do  but since you have decided to do it yourself then you now run the risk of serious burn out trying to pack, move and carry stuff, arrange for the utilities to be terminated………. You get the point.

Mistake #2

My friends will help me

It’s common to have friends and family promise faithfully to help and then you find that all those promises fall through and you are left alone or with a significantly reduced team.

Well depending on your family and friends size and how close knit you are then why not make a “party” of the whole affair, cook some food make some drinks (preferably not alcoholic) and get it done!

Mistake #3

Underestimating the volume of work

This is perhaps the easiest thing to do. its common to just look at what items you can see and feel that its not all that bad …well not so fast,remember you will have to unpack the dresser, unpack the chest of  drawers, the cupboard the ……….. yeah when you add that up the task now seem unsurmountable  . well the solution to that is to pace yourself do it a little at a time if time permits . start early carry all the items that are not used regularly. the paintings,, the things in the closet etc

Mistake #4

Not Purging Before The Move

It is always surprising how many things we accumulate over the years , we buy stuff  receive stuff and we put them away and essentially forget them ……….untill you have to move . So take the oppprtunity every year or so to do a complete purge . you could do it lets say at the beginning or end of each year . this would go a long way in keeping the volume of items to a manageable level.But hwo many people will do that religiously? Hardly anybody so guess what use the impending move as a reason to start the purging process with enthusiasm. Doing that regularly or properly will alleviate the enormous burden you literally have to carry on moving day

Mistake #5

Inefficient packing

Proper packing is very important to any move whether done by a professional or the DIY

Using the right boxes for the correct items will save you lots of time in repacking broken boxes when they break under the load, labelling correctly will lessen the time spent in sorting thru mountains of boxes to find your toothbrush etc

Feel free to check our moving tips  for  detailed information on how to pack and be safe in your endeavour.