“Hiring movers was the best money I’ve ever spent,” fellow domesticated dads told me for weeks as I planned to move my wife, son, cats, cars, and junk across town by myself. “Don’t bother, just spend the money!” they exclaimed. My wife, too, suggested we forego the hassle and just rip off the bandaid. But nobody should underestimate just how cheap of a man I am, and just how much punishment I’ll put myself through to save a buck. It’s in my blood.
Quite a few of my traits are a byproduct of having grown up on or near military bases in a household of six boys, an army dad, and a German stay-at-home mom. Two of the most enduring of those traits are 1. My frugality and 2. My refusal to ever complain.
The second one is actually more than just a “refusal to ever complain,” it’s a sense of pride when I’m able to endure a physical hardship. I enjoy a challenge just for the sake of a challenge, even if — perhaps especially if — it really, really sucks. I don’t know if this is just me trying to make up for the fact that I’m a blogger and not an army soldier like my dad and many of my childhood friends, or if it’s just a byproduct of having grown up around other military kids and brothers who all challenged one another to be tough. It’s also likely that any thoughts I have about complaining are quickly quenched by the context of actual hardships that many of the military families that I grew up around faced.
I won’t psychoanalyze myself further, but you get the idea: I like doing difficult things, even if they’re sometimes pointless. For example, I look back fondly at the time I slept in an ice-cold diesel manual minivan and bathed in the Baltic Sea. I didn’t love getting trenchfoot while living out of a Land Cruiser and fixing a rusty, mouse-infested Willys FC-170, but you can’t tell me that wasn’t awesome. The time I drove 1,000 miles in a rusted-out 1948 Willys before breaking down in the middle of nowhere, Kansas was a swell time. All the times I had to weld on my back in the snow in freezing weather to fix giant rust holes in my Jeep’s unibody-rails — they were extremely cool. Horrible, but cool.
And so, maybe, as I bask in the sunny rays of California, and blog on my MacBook, I saw this move — which I would have to do solo, as my wife is looking after baby-Delmar and my local friend-group is, uh, diminutive — as just another tiny chapter in my never ending quest to push myself, even a tiny bit. It’s not efficient, and it’s going to suck a little, but that’s the point.
Combine my suck-it-up-itude with my disdain for paying people to do things I can do myself, and there was no other option. Moving all of my wife’s and my stuff would have probably cost $1200, and I can rent a U-Haul trailer for $30 a day. I didn’t go for any of the box-trucks, because even though they’re bigger and only cost $30 or so a day, U-Haul charges a per-mile fee, and you know I’m not payin’ that, especially since I recently(ish) purchased a 1989 Chevy K1500 with a 350 small-block V8 under the hood.
And not only that, while researching which fluid to put in my rear diff (forums have not come to a consensus to know exactly which type is correct; it’s really strange), I learned that my K1500 isn’t just any ordinary K1500. This thing was built to tow. Check out the axle in the rear — it’s a 14-bolt semi-float axle, an absolute monster:
It’s a five-speed, 350 V8, 14-bolt K1500, and the rear trailer hitch has actually been welded to the frame!:
Clearly, I’m well equipped to move all of our stuff over a weekend for a paltry 60 bucks plus insurance and tax and gas. That’s a savings of over $1,400! Who could turn that down? Not I. And so I somehow convinced my wife this was the avenue we were going down, and let me tell you folks: We definitely put our marriage through the equivalent of SAE J2807. And what’s worse is, I’ve run the numbers, and honestly: This really didn’t save us that much cash.
First things first: What we were dealing with was a 1,500 square foot two-bedroom Townhouse occupied by two adults with 70 years worth of combined junk. The two cats have also accumulated some things in the past two years in the form of toys and treats, while baby-Delmar has accumulated a bunch of baby stuff that has seemingly come from nowhere in insane volumes. What the hell is a keekaroo? Do we really need a dedicated diaper bin? How did we get so many clothes; does he need all this?
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Anyway, complicating things is the fact that my baby boy is six weeks old, and as such is extremely demanding. Actually, if you Google it, you’ll see that six to eight weeks is “peak fussiness” for babies, and I won’t lie: It’s a nightmare.
For those of you who haven’t procreated, I think the best analogy I can give you is a slipping transmission. Sometimes, if the temperature outside is just right, and you’re on just the right stretch of road, maybe it won’t slip and you’ll cruise along smoothly. Maybe you can shove a bottle of Lucas Transmission Fix down your transmission’s dipstick hole, maybe you can pacify it by jammimg the vehicle into the right gear, maybe if you plumb in an external cooler and keep from leaning too hard on the gas you’ll get down the road without an issue.
But in the end you’re screwed. Utterly, thoroughly screwed. Because your stopgap fixes — the temperature optimization, the bottle, the gear shift lever-pacifier, the dance you do with your right pedal — they’re not going save you from what happens at the worst time: A total meltdown. And I’m talkin’: Stuck in traffic in 100 degree weather, going uphill, and your vehicle is just going apeshit, the motor is screaming, it’s shuttering like mad, there’s all sorts of fluid just pouring all over the place for some reason, and you’re just praying, praying to god that somehow your child will calm the ef down because it’s 3AM and you’re so tired you can’t even continue with this transmission analogy.
So anyway, back to this move. Packing was rough, as baby-Delmar required my wife Elise’s attention quite often, meaning I had to basically pack an entire household alone, save for certain larger, more cumbersome items (but not heavy ones, as she can’t lift much at the moment). Speaking of, I cannot believe how horrible it is to move a king size mattress. I mean horrible. I wasn’t expecting it to be that hard; after all, I’ve successfully moved 500+ pound engines around the country without any issue — check it out:
But a mattress, while lighter than an engine, is much, much worse to transport and for one reason: It’s got basically zero structural rigidity. It is a seven-foot-tall, six-foot-wide 180 pound wet noodle, and trying to get it down stairs out into the U-Haul trailer was impossible. It couldn’t be done. I started to look into hiring an extra set of hands, buying a special bag with handles, or just leaving the mattress for future-me to deal with next week.
But then I came up with this little contraption:
Basically, I used pieces of the bedframe, along with some ratchet straps, to create a rib right down the center of the mattress to give it some rigidity. This would allow me to stand it upright on some dollies I had purchased, and then — with Elise’s help — wheel the behemoth to my dirt-cheap trailer.
The heaviest thing I had to move was this dresser, which must be made of solid oak, because it weighs roughly 300 pounds:
I personally have never bought furniture of such high quality, andI have no desire to after having to move that whole dresser down the stairs by myself (I slid it upside down along a moving blanket), and then rolling it to the truck and lifting it up into the bed, one side at a time:
But it wasn’t just moving heavy things that made this relocation such a pain, it was the boxing of all of our stuff, it was the disassembly of all the furniture, and it was the procurement of all the ancillary moving things, many of which I didn’t initially realize I needed. It all adds up.
The trailer came in at $82 for the two days, the four dollies I had to buy to move the furniture were $130, the moving blankets added up to $40, the gas for the three trips in our two vehicles (assuming 8 MPG in the truck and 20 in her RX350 and current $5/gallon gas price) got us to about $180, the tape was probably $20, the stuff I broke (some glasses — see below) was maybe another $50, and the minor damage I did to the Townhouse trying to drag huge things by myself was maybe $100 or $200. Add that all up and I ended up at about $600 to $700. And it would have been more if I had to buy new boxes (Elise sourced those for free).
That means I saved us a paltry $600 doing this move alone (I can sell some things to increase that figure, to be sure). And yes, I — a cheapo — realize that $600 is nothing to scoff at, but realize that I traded probably 24 hours for $600. That’s $25 an hour, and it would have been a lot less than $25 I had hurt myself or done more damage to the house or our stuff. And then there’s the priceless stuff like attention I could have given my child during that time or the avoidance of Elise’s wrath for me having wasted all that time by being cheap, and yeah, on paper — because I’m lucky enough to have the means — this definitely was the wrong move.
And yet, I kind of enjoyed it, not just because of the exercise and the problem solving and the wrenching, but because it meant I could put my new K1500 to work, and it was phenomenal. That 350 cubic-inch V8 makes gobs of torque, and the 3.73 gearing in those axles worked superbly with the manual transmission to haul that 3,500 pound trailer right up the steep, hot Sepulveda Pass:
I averaged about 55 mph most of the way, and the truck felt stable and reasonably responsive. Downshifting assisted the brakes in slowing the truck down, and gave me enough torque to pull up steep grades. The ride was great, and even though my extended-cab truck only has a 6.5-foot bed, I actually don’t mind giving up some bed length for extra space in the cab to put items I don’t want to get dusty on the freeway.
This GMT400 truck has blown me away ever since I bought it for $4,900. It’s quiet, smooth, powerful, and extremely capable, plus it doesn’t have a spec of rust on it, and it’s so anonymous and ubiquitous that I can use it as a genuine beater without worry about having to replace some unobtainium part.
What a great machine — a true joy that made all these aches in my arms and back disappear from my mind as I smiled from ear to ear while rowing through those five gears. All that blabbering at the beginning of this article about me liking a challenge was true, but this right here — seeing this old truck do its thing — that was the real point of all this. And it was absolutely worth it.
Sometimes doing crap the long, hard, or roundabout way, just to see something do what its supposed to do, is awesome.
There’s just something satisfying about it.
I agree, sometimes a little “doing it the hard way” can bring satisfaction but now that have done it, would you do it again?
Probably.
Gotta work on that :). Let me ask you again …
Seriously DT, you are only getting older and once you make it through Newborn Times there’s still Toddler Times. Pay to reduce physical and mental strain on yourself! It has very real benefits for Delmar, Elise, and you (even though you’re stubborn and cheap).
Even after saying this?
> And then there’s the priceless stuff like attention I could have given my child during that time or the avoidance of Elise’s wrath for me having wasted all that time by being cheap
That’s single-guy mindset. Other people need/want your attention now. That’s something only you can provide. The moving can be done by other people.
THIS. David, you are now part of a team. While it makes for an amusing article, the team is your priority. We love the “old” DT, but the team loves and needs current DT.
I really dislike this attitude. As life changes (marriage, kids) some things definitely change, no doubt. But not everything! You don’t have to flip a switch and stop being who you’ve always been.
The best parents aren’t those who reconstruct their entire lives around their children. The best parents find ways to welcome their children into their lives.
I’m proud of David for doing this the hard way – he seems to have gotten a lot of satisfaction from it, especially from putting his truck to work. The financial savings isn’t trivial either! Let’s not make every new parent think they must reinvent themselves to succeed.
Is hiring movers so you can help your wife take care of your fussy baby really reinventing yourself? Or is it just figuring out a way to ease a stressful situation?
There is nothing inherently good in doing something the hard way. Sometimes the hard way is just … harder.
Not to mention the added stress that it puts on Elise. I love DT and his frugality makes for amusing articles but he’s part of a team now. Keep the cheap car behavior coming… it makes for great DT content. But doing a move like this exits the realm of frugal amusement and, it pains me to say this, into the realm of selfishness IMHO.
I will say that it looked like a whole lot of extra fuss that could’ve been avoided with at least one extra pair of hands.
I just moved from Houston TX to Portland OR. The movers were insanely expensive- including packing- but worth it.
That’s quaint … $1,200 to hire movers in LA. Now try again, this time insured movers with a proven good reputation and loads of references. I’m in DC and my last move in 2018 was a hair shy of $5k all in with boxes and tip. And no, the movers did not pack most things. Granted, we had a rowhouse with 4 BR, but it was an in-town move (also right after my wife gave birth). Even with that cost, it was the absolute best money we spent. Movers that actually got stuff in and out of the house without damage to stuff or the houses. Put boxes and furniture in the right rooms. Made a massive difference getting kids and wife settled quickly and with a hell of a lot less frustration.
It’s ok to DIY when you are single or at least no kids. But not only does your family deserve sanity, but your family shouldn’t have to worry about you getting injured if you can afford the movers.
That was my thought, too. 1200 is damn cheap. We moved our 2br to another 2br one street away and the quotes I got, without them packing anything, was around 3k. We ended up doing it ourselves and definitely regretted it. Oh, I’m in the DC area too, northern VA.
LA resident here. It was a little over $4000 including tip to move our family from a small house to a slightly less small house in 2022. We packed everything ourselves ahead of time and I made about 20 or so trips on my own before moving day. $1200 is close to what one might spend just in boxes and materials.
That was just hiring two dudes to move some stuff for us, not really a full move.
You got more stories and laughs out of it than we did from our move. No matter the price, I say that was worth it.
Definitely always hire movers when you move across town. It usually works out to be cheaper. The rental companies suck you in with great advertised prices but by the time they add mileage, fees, “mandatory insurance,” etc it’s often the same price if not more expensive to do it yourself.
Especially if you do the packing and just have them move the boxes.
For cross-country moves, that can get trickier especially if you don’t have a place picked out where you can send the truck directly there. If your stuff has to go into storage first, you can pretty much bank on a bunch of it getting damaged, destroyed or lost and they write the contracts very favorably so they almost never have to compensate you for it.
Just wait until you get to the unpacking and moving in portion.
Did you even consider calling it an Autopian meet up?
While self moving is cheaper if done right you definitely didn’t do it right. May I refer you to my prior suggestions that not only are you well loved by a large number of testosterone fueled car fans you also are the boss of a few male colleagues that are at least capable of moving light boxes but also you have a few smart friends who can assist you on realizing many hands make for light work. I would suggest in the future listening to Elise NHRN in future endeavors you have no experience in.
I have learned hard jobs done by experienced workers make the job look easy. Heck you don’t even get gravity.
I did an intestate move for my employer many years ago with a wife and children aged 7 and 3. My employer bought my old house (for less than I anticipated) and paid for the move with a per diem for my family until we were settled. Moving my family’s stuff was the worst part. Very painful and stressful because I needed to be there for the packing, and at my new place for the unpacking while I had a lot of other things to do. The next time I move I’m going to get someone to auction off all of my crap, grab the check, and start over again with all new stuff.
I have done this as a bachelor and it worked okay. But for some reason my boss thought I screwed them on a $1,500 moving allowance.
It’s pretty simple. You are a logistics person, which is fine. I am as well. Puzzles and solutions and such.
The problem for you is that you choose complicated puzzles ALL THE TIME, and continually need extra lives to complete the level, lol.
Just toss that fuckin’ mattress down the stairs, or out the window. It makes no difference. It’s gonna cost the same.
You consistently decide the most difficult way to do things, for no actual real reason, other than that it is an option.
This makes you…you.
“this dresser, which must be made of solid oak, because it weighs roughly 300 pounds”
Pretty sure its core is particle board. Most laminated furniture is.
Particle board can be surprisingly heavy.
“I personally have never bought furniture of such high quality, andI have no desire to after having to move that whole dresser down the stairs by myself”
Nor should you. Toddlers armed with markers, mom’s hammer and smelly bodily fluids can make short work of anything expensive.
Looking at the furniture you do have I see lots of rounded corners and padded surfaces, especially on the bed. If anything that looks ideal. Keep those.
If you do need replacements look for stuff with bullnosed edges, preferably with relatively soft surfaces.
Eh, the dresser I use today is the one my parents bought me when I was in preschool. It’s not a kid’s dresser. It’s solid oak and it survived my entire childhood and is still good today. The *really* good stuff will shrug off the markers/etc and even at the toddler stage kids should not be peeing on the furniture. 😉
YMMV. Toddlers gonna toddler.
I should have clarified though to stick with used furniture since its probably already been broken in. And yeah, actual solid wood is the way to go. Particle board SUCKS.
There is a middle ground between paying movers just to show up and doing it yourself. On uHauls site while renting a truck you can also click a box to have 2 young and strong men to show up and actually move your stuff from the house to the truck.
Last time I did this it cost about $200 and was worth every penny as they lifted a dresser that weighs several hundred pounds, spun it upright and then proceeded to walk it up a staircase with a 90 degree turn at each end
I’ve done the same, and I’ll never move without hiring help again. They’re younger and stronger than I am and they can pack a truck better too.
“staircase with a 90 degree turn at each end”
Yeah, but did they yell “PIVOT!”?
Never underestimate the hassle of multiple trips. If you’re doing things yourself, rent the largest truck you can. Doesn’t matter if it isn’t filled, going one smaller and taking two trips will end up costing more money, and most significantly, time.
Prior to 25 = move yourself plus one other person. Your accumulated stuff is not insurmountable and probably not that valuable.
Somewhere around or after 35 = Paying someone else to pack and move all of your stuff that you accumulated in the past 15 or so years will more than pay for itself in time and reduced physical / mental torture.
I’m a cheap bastard, too! I generally refuse to pay for anything I can do myself, I feel like a fool when I could’ve done it for free. I’ve never hired movers, and as an apartment dweller I’ve moved plenty. I’ve even committed to never buying anything I can’t personally carry up and down a flight of stairs– giant mattresses very much included (learned that one the hard way– the mattress bags with handles don’t help much).
But I’m middle-aged now, and my last move a couple years ago just about killed me. By the end of it I could barely walk. I was exhausted and depressed and beat to hell, and just like you I’d spent hundreds of dollars on it anyway! Next time I move I’m going to pay, and I might throw in $100 for someone to clean the place, too, and I bet I won’t regret one penny of it.
I used to think that David was a Stoic. TIL that he is a Masochist. But hey, I’m not here to kink-shame. The title of this post shows that are learning the way of wisdom, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll avoid hurting yourself seriously in the future. Elise and Delmar need you to be whole and healthy, so keep that in mind. As a military brat myself, I understand the drive to excel, and as a disabled Veteran, I also understand that there’s no shame in asking for and receiving assistance when something is beyond your ability. As others have said, moving sucks and even if you hire someone, you have to do a significant amount of packing and protecting of your valued possessions, but the movers can save significant wear and tear on your body by moving the heavy stuff for you. Next time, maybe hire some folks to load (and later, unload) the trailer for you and then you can still experience the joys of hauling it with your truck, but with significantly lower risk to your back.
“Doesn’t have a speck of rust on it.”
I’ve moved myself, friends, and my family multiple times. There is simply, no good way to do it until somebody invents a Star Trek-style transporter pad that you can just shove all your stuff onto and beam it to its destination in a few goes.
A few observations on the reality of moving…
I did a lot of moving recently with my mom. Moving sucks. I will never move myself or anyone else again
The biggest issue is the emotional side. Moving is always upsetting. And you always find stuff that reminds you of events you hadn’t thought about for years.
For me, the big one I remember is, of all things, Cling Wrap. My mom lived in independent living past her 97th birthday. Then she got really sick and when she was in the hospital, the doctors told me that she really needed a lot more help. So, we moved her stuff down the hall from independent to assisted living. As we were moving her stuff, I found a pantry that had about 10 brand new rolls of Cling Wrap. She had a list next to it with a list of things to get from the grocery store and cling wrap was written on the top. She would go to the store and get a box of Cling Wrap, bring it home, put in the pantry and then forget to mark it off her list. Then when the next trip to the store was coming up, she would go into the pantry , pull out the list and then go back to the store to get more cling wrap. She had been doing that for months and I felt so guilty that I didn’t see how much her mind had faded so quickly (PS, UTIs are very dangerous to the elderly. They cause brain damage quickly). I remember seeing that cling wrap and breaking down in tears for at least an hour and not packing a single thing because I had missed the signs of my mom struggling
If we had hired a moving company with a packer, that entire pantry would have been empty in 30 minutes or less. Sure, there would have been a ton of stuff to throw out when unpacking, but the pantry would have been cleared with no emotional baggage caused by something silly like Cling Wrap.
As you have family David, these emotional baggage things will become common. A forgotten toy found under a bed, a mug from a place you used to go to on dates that is closed now, etc.
And don’t get me started on the physical side. A moving company is a hell of a lot cheaper than my out-of-pocket max. And a single loud pop from some random part of my body will hit that out-of-pocket max in a heartbeat. I started getting random loud pops from my body around 40 and they have become more commonplace as I’ve gotten older. I highly recommend against them.
That was sad. I thought it’d be an ode to cling wrap as a magical product for moving furniture (which it is). I hope your mom and you are OK.
Unfortunately, my mom passed away a couple months later. Whatever portion of her brain that controlled her appetite stopped working. She lost well over half her body weight in her last couple years of her life.
It was not all bad. We got to spend 2 years with her, my wife and her became best friends and I got to know the woman my dad fell in love with instead of just Mom that made me eat yucky green stuff.
And 1 day from 98 is a LONG life. She passed away with us around her, reading stories she had marked in her Bible and in no pain.
I’m sorry for your loss 🙁
Thank you. But in a weird way, I don’t see it as a loss. I moved away from my mom when I was 22. I saw mom for Christmas and some vacations, maybe once every couple of years as I ended up with my own family about 2 days of driving away. We moved my mom up from Florida when she was 94. I wouldn’t say I was close to mom and my wife didn’t know her well and my kids had only met her once or twice.
We got 3 years of being around mom. I got to know her as someone other than mom. She was sassy, had a great sense of humor, could roll her eyes with the best of them, and had a sarcastic streak that was a mile wide, but never mean spirited. My wife and her were peas in a pod and I would get calls from them from almost anywhere where they were gone to get into trouble together.
In many respects, we didn’t lose my mom, but found her. Those nearly 3 years we got with her changed my entire perspective of her. Mom. Without the pressure of being a mother having to set a good example for a child or being a perfect hostess for a quick visit, mom relaxed and let herself be herself. Fart when you need to, tease when you feel like it, make funny faces when the timing is right and laugh constantly. I discovered the goofy little imp that wrapped my dad around her finger for decades.
That’s wonderful. <3
Your mother died well. My mother lived 100 yr and 222 days. She remained “with it” to the last, but broke her hip and my sister just couldn’t help her anymore. She put mom in a hospice/skilled nursing situation. When my sister visited her later in the evening, mom looked around and said “well, this is grim”. She didn’t wake up for the next morning.
Unfortunately, none of of us were there for her final hours.
Mom taught me a lot about life, including death. One of which is that dying isn’t as scary as you would think. It still is scary of course, but in her final week or so, she started being in this strange place between life and death. She would flirt with some dude (hopefully dad!), she would have conversations with people I didn’t see, she would laugh and smile at conversations she was having.
Maybe it was a brain running low on critical chemicals and mis-firing in some weird combination of memories and dreams, and not a sign of an afterlife, but I believe she was crossing over to whatever lies beyond and found it fun, exciting and full of loved ones.
One of her favorite stories in the last couple years of life is one of those half-way things. My sister died of Covid. Mom and her were extremely close. The day my sister died, my mom had what she called a vision. She was with her husband (who had passed away years ago) and my sister was a young girl trying to skip rocks. My dad got up and started teaching her how to skip rocks while my sister ran out around cheering whenever one did skip. Then dad looked at mom and told her “go on, I’ll take care of her.” This told mom that my sister, who had had a hard life at times was happy and safe and in the care of my dad.
You need to update your standards to conform with your new locale! By California standards, that truck is definitely rusty.
The thing I could never wrap my head around when my kids were young is why does a 15lb person need 75lbs of support gear for an afternoon at granny’s…..diapers, bottles, formula, clothes, playpen, stroller, car seat….the list goes on amd on..
Six weeks old is a walk in the park, wait till the “terrible twos”: when they learn the word no, and how to use it against you !!!
Enjoy them while they are young….and relatively inexpensive. At 4 or 5 a Barbie doll or new Hot Wheels is a lot cheaper than an iPhone, laptop, xBox or prom dress when they are 16.
That’s only if you don’t count the cost of daycare. We were spending $500/week when the kids were in daycare. Phones and laptops aren’t cheap by any means, but they’re not $500/week unless you’re at rent a center.
I empathize with the why-pay-someone-to-do-something-I-can-do-myself mindset, but I’m 20 years older than you (at least) and my back’s been shot for the past 10 years, probably due in part to that very same attitude. I always figured ‘if I CAN lift it, then it must be OK for me to carry” but now, three repaired hernias (and a mess of bulging discs in my spine) later I know that’s not necessarily the case.
Do yourself a favor next time David and just bite the bullet, swallow your pride, and pay some guys younger/stronger than yourself to move heavy things on your behalf. You might not think doing so is necessary or smart TODAY, but when you’re 50, your quality of life will be a lot better. 🙂
THIS.
I just had surgery because of that dumb attitude, and between the coinsurance, travel, post-op care, and time off work, I’m spending as much as I would have if I had hired out some of the harder jobs.
Money is money. You can almost always make more. Vertebrae and soft tissue and joints? You can’t make more.
As the designated “Tetris Guy” in every move I’ve ever been a part of, seeing all that empty space in the back of that trailer, not to mention the near-empty pickup-bed is giving me a twitchy right eyelid.
Yeah, I’m sure that’s the last trip and there just wasn’t enough stuff left to fill it. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
A handy tool for self-movers I haven’t seen mentioned are “furniture sliders”: circular plastic disks with either carpeted bases for smooth floors or smooth bases for use on carpets. Put a set under the floor-contact points of anything heavy and they minimize horizontal friction. You can move a 300 pound piece of furniture with one hand.
A few minutes placing your sliders and furniture moving becomes a giant game of curling, minus the brooms. Bonus: sliders are cheap and reusable so you’ll probably only need to buy once for any future moves.
Of course they’re for indoor use only, but when you’re moving into a new place it’s guaranteed that someone’s going to decide later that your couch, armoire, refrigerator, or decorative boat anchor would really be better positioned across the room or in another room. Try it this way and you’ll never go back to lift and carry.
Yeah those things are great. Really handy when painting or moving everything out of a room for new carpet.
My wife found those in Home Depot years ago and suggested we give them a try. I was skeptical, but I figured, what the hell, and you are right. They’re indispensable when moving furniture.
I once moved with a miata. I didn’t have much stuff at the time, but the queen size futon was the most precarious item to move. I think it would cost a lot more to use movers. $1200 seems too cheap for California
I once moved from my apartment in a 914. I removed the Targa roof for maximum height and completed the task. It was not easy, though.
I did not laugh until I reached your Ode on a Rear Axle. Which made me think of comparing you to John Keats. Which led me to a list of “keats memorable quotes,” so very applicable:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.
Mr Keats presumably never imagined a stout rear axle and a welded trailer hitch, or maybe he did?
Truthfully moving sucks no matter how you do it. You do it with friends and or family and you’re all about to kill each other by the end of it if you are lucky. Pay for movers and when your shit gets broken you’re not getting anything out of them.
As someone who prefers to roll solo the ability to move something myself is major selling criteria to me. When I move in the next couple of years I should be able to move everything but my mattress by myself.
Moving also does a good job of showing you what shit you have is unnecessary and what shit is just unnecessarily heavy and or unwieldy.