Moving!!!

We are moving this week. And from this move I have learned a lot that I wish I knew before we moved. Some of it we learned in time some of it was a little late. I want to compile everything that I learned so you can be informed before a move. If you have any other ideas or suggestions please comment so that anyone who reads this later can also learn from your experiences.

First of all we are moving from Arizona to Virginia. I imagine that some of this information will only apply to long trips. Also it really only applies if you have to pay for the move yourself and do not have a job paying for you to move.

How to move your stuff:
We chose to use ABF freight. They have a self pack option that is very similar to PODS. They drop off large containers that you fill up yourself and then they come and put it on a flatbed and move it for you. We looked at pods but found that ABF is somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 the cost of PODS. Also my in-laws just moved from Nevada to Maryland with PODS and were not quite happy with the service, not to mention the price.
We also looked at U-Haul as another option. Not only would we have to deal with the hassle of driving a large truck with a car on a trailer behind it, it would also cost more. Between the cost of about 300 gallons of gas and the cost of the U-Haul for 5 days plus 2300 miles of driving it works out to be about the same price as ABF. So I will let someone else drive my stuff out and will just happily drive my car out.

Boxes:
We got most of our boxes for free which was nice. Yesterday though we started to run a little short so I went out and bought a few. I searched online for the best price but found nothing better than what Tami knew about. Apparently Harbor Freight in Tempe (and maybe other locations) sells the used boxes that their merchandise comes in. All of the ones I saw were about the same size of roughly 24" x 18" 10". Now that won't work for everything but it is large enough to hold a lot of stuff but small enough to not be too heavy as long as books do not go in it. Now here is the best part. They sell them for 4 for a dollar. There is not a better deal out there when it comes to buying boxes.

Packing material:
Most of our packing material was newspapers that we got from my grandparents (since they are one of the few people I know that still gets papers. However we had a brilliant idea when phone books got delivered while we were packing. It is amazing that they still get delivered and for a lot of people they go straight to the recycling. But if you cut off the spine of the book you are left with a neat and rather thick pile of packing material.

I hope that this helps someone sometime and that I do not have to do this too many more times in my life. Please leave comments of your ideas and experiences to help others.