Moving on a Budget
Here are some tips about moving without spending too much money. This is what I learned:
Find Free Packing Materials:
Skip the Truck Rental:
If you are just moving across town … get your friends and family to help by driving a convoy of pickups. By skipping the rental of trucks this will help your budget a lot. Another added bonus to this method is that once the convoy shows up at the new house it’s easier to navigate the boxes because they are spread out between the vehicles. The kid’s stuff is in the back of Grandpa’s truck and all the scrapbooks are in your backseat. All the precious family photos and family heirlooms are safely tucked into the backseat of Daddy’s truck etc … you get the idea.
Skip the Moving Company, if you can:
You can hire a moving company to pack, move and unpack the whole house, but why? It seems like a huge waste of money and part of the fun is the packing and unpacking. While emptying closets and packing boxes, you can find all sorts of treasures that had long been forgotten about. It’s fun, a lot of work, but fun. You can do 100% of the work all by yourself and although it’s hard, it is worth every second. You wonder how you have accumulated so much over the years. You can call for daily pick ups from the area thrift/charities and stores. This is one thing you can totally do by yourself and save a lot of money in the process.
Move in Later:
Sometimes if you move in the day you get the keys a lot of money and time could be wasted. If the house you’re moving into needs to be deep cleaned and re-painted before you can move in this also gives you some opportunities to assess the storage potential of each room, measure for furniture arrangements, etc. How does this save money? By knowing where everything will fit and how it would all be stored. You can keep yourself from moving in with furniture that might be too big/too small and needing to buy new or having too much stuff and not enough storage. This enables you to have a garage sale to get rid of those items you would no longer have room for. This saves money, time and headaches. Just imagine moving into a new house only to find that your washer and dryer are too big for the space allotted or that your dining room table won’t fit anywhere! Move in after you have had a chance to truly assess every aspect of the house and the storage. Give yourself time to search for the best prices on items you may need to buy (like refrigerators or storage sheds) instead of needing to rush out and buy something the day you move in.