It sounded like an easy prospect. I owned two houses next to each other and used one as an office. I decided to sell the second home and move “a few things” next door to my house. I was selling most of the furniture, having a file storage company pick up most of the files, and my staff and I were going through stacks of magazines, tapes, DVDs, brochures and promotional materials we had collected on behalf of our clients during the past couple of years.
“You’re just moving next door,” my office manager said. “What could be easier? There are so many duplicates of items you won’t need to keep, and it will be simple. We’ll all just walk things over and be done.” She was wrong.
Being packed and ready to go is an easy way to save money on moving costs. Most companies begin charging when they arrive and continue until they are finished. If you can get everything boxed up and organized they can get their job done faster. If you live above the first or second floor, and are physically capable, carry whatever you can downstairs to the loading area to save time that you will be billed if the movers have to do it.
Thank goodness for local movers. I had always seen the moving fans that referred to “local” or “city movers,” but never paid much attention. I had no intention of moving. Suddenly, I paid attention. Although I felt silly calling a moving company to move me, literally, a few yards, the nice people acted like this was quite a routine request. Two men came out to look at the items to be moved, and, in a kind and gentle way, informed me this would be anything but “easy.” Although it didn’t look like a whole lot in a two-bedroom house, in reality the items I intended to move just wouldn’t fit into another two-bedroom house next door that was already quite full of my furniture and possessions.
I had visions of the television shows and magazine articles I saw about “hoarders.” I feared that my home would look like those of the people who never threw things away and let everything pile up. We had all seen them on the news, too. Every once in a while, one of those hoarders had a fire, and the fire fighters couldn’t get in because of the piles of useless goods, papers, trash and so-called collectables. I didn’t want my legacy to be that of a hoarder. I didn’t want to be on television. I just wanted to sell the house next door and move some of the things to my house.
The movers must have seen the fear on my face. They turned into instant decorators and architects, as we walked back and forth between the two houses; and they figured out where everything would go. Their solutions were almost genius, as they had clearly done this before. I had always thought about city movers as packing up everything and moving from one location to another – usually, in our upwardly-mobile society, from a smaller home to a larger one. That week, I learned that movers do a lot more than empty one place and fill up another.
I kept a lot more things that I should have when I moved them from the office to my house. Sometimes I’ll notice some tapes and wonder if I’ll ever watch them again, or if I really need that many magazines when all the content is probably online anyway. But, there’s no rush to do anything about it, thanks to my designer-mover-problem solvers who helped me more than they will ever know.