Southern U-Haul originally uploaded by Doug Geisler
Last week’s poll asked about how you would react to someone touching your child without your permission. While the discussion was centered mainly around those who were concerned for the health of the child vs those who thought it was totally great to have weird strangers touch their child, 72% of respondents said they would not want someone touching their child without permission. Seriously, do not touch other people without asking permission, full stop.
This week’s poll comes after I helped someone move yesterday. It’s never a fun experience helping someone move, especially when they are struggling to find more than one or two people to help. I have been the sole helper, in addition to the family moving, on more than one occasion and I end up paying for it physically the next day–including today.
Yesterday we had to move a two bedroom townhouse + loft into another two bedroom townhouse + loft only a few miles away. While there wasn’t much furniture to move, the majority of the heavy lifting came in the form of overstuffed boxes which were deceptively heavy or awkward to handle. In addition to that was the up and down the stairs action going on.
While I am always happy to put one in the karma bucket (and believe me those of you out there I have helped, I *will* be calling when it’s time to cash in that favor and I *will* expect you to be there ;-)) by helping others move, I seem to have a problem remembering that I’m going to be a very sore waste of space the next day.
So what about you? Do you hire professional movers (something I did once before and it was probably worth every single penny; especially since it was a 700 mile move to an area where I knew no one) or do you round up your friends and all of their available vehicles to move your crap from one location to another? Are you available at a moments notice to help people move, knowing that you’re going to call in that favor at some point in the future? Do you pay heartily for the work the next day with soreness and barely being able to stumble out of bed or do you routinely run up and down stairs carrying awkwardly shaped items to keep yourself in shape?
Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on and vote on the side bar and then feel free to check out our expired polls in the archive or read through the previous posts about polls here.
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August 12th, 2012 at 8:51 am
I moved to MN from New York, I moved everything myself. I had my pickup truck that had side racks on it, and a small tow-behind U-Haul enclosed trailer. Back then, everything I owned (pretty much) fit. Since then, I’ve accumulated quite a bit more stuff (junk??), so next time I think I would have to hire a moving company. Ideally, though, my next move would be fairly close and I would have time to move things slowly over the span of a few weeks. Then I could do it with just a little help moving the big things.
I have helped people move, and am always willing to help. It’s usually kinda fun!
August 12th, 2012 at 9:32 am
I hate moving. And I hate helping others move. I have a friend who moved three times in 18 months. That’s about when I stopped helping others move. I build karma in other ways.
So when it was time for me to move last month, I hired movers. It was the best decision I could have made. It was 90 degrees and humid. My new place is on the third floor, with no elevator. Even if I could have found a group of friends, it would have taken us hours.
I hired 4 guys to move for me. It took them 2.5 hours, including drive time. It was so easy and worth every penny.
Of course, almost a full month later and I’m still not unpacked. Hopefully by the end of the day today I will be.
August 12th, 2012 at 9:55 am
You’ve helped us move, as the sole helper, and we appreciated it more than we can say.
Next time we move, we’re hiring movers. No question. Moving a 1-2 BR apartment is cake, but now we’re in a 4br, 2ba, 2 living room house, and we’re not doing it ourselves.
Hopefully next time we move it will be our last for a very, very, very long time too.
August 12th, 2012 at 11:41 am
I’ve moved my family on my own, and I’ve moved my family with not enough help and moved my family with more than enough help. I’ve helped people move that plan well, I’ve helped people move that don’t plan at all, and I’ve helped people move that didn’t really need my help.
Helping comes with my wife having a large family, and owning vehicles that can pull a trailer, house lots of stuff, or do both. Getting help comes with my wife having a large family, oh and of course, having kids.
My last move was moving my youngest son (21) and his girlfriend/baby momma into a new apartment. No elevator, 3rd floor apartment. He had 3 friends and a truck, it was almost exactly the right amount of people.
I helped a single mother move 10 or 12 years ago who my wife did daycare for her kid. Other than a couple things, I did the boxing and loading, and unloading. Took two days and I earned more than one karama point on that one.
Given a choice, I’d personally prefer to never move my home ever again. Though I expect to move at least twice more. I may get some movers for those two.
August 12th, 2012 at 10:40 pm
The last time I moved was from Bloomington to Burnsville and we had help from friends. Our 2-bedroom apartment was garden level and on the end, so it wasn’t too far from there to the moving truck. We spent the days ahead of the move packing everything that wasn’t essential and moving it to the living room in position to be moved right out the sliding glass doors. We put everything in order of when it needed to be taken out. The truck was loaded in an hour and everything was unloaded into our house in a half hour. Add the time it took to get the rental van in the morning and the drive time between the apartment and our house and the whole process took under 3 hours. I got dinner and paid for the guys’ movie ticket when we went to see whatever was at the IMAX that day.
I’ve been a part of moves where nothing was labeled, pretty much every room was still setup, and the people being moved were still packing stuff up as we tried to move things to their truck. I have no problem helping people move, but you’ve got to show that you appreciate people’s time. Be ready when they get there and feed them when it’s done. It’s pretty simple.
August 13th, 2012 at 3:21 am
Had help (mainly my family, Mom and Dad schlepped our things plenty in those “moving” years). Have helped when asked. Our last move involved moving from a house we had lived in for 15 years to a new to us house 15 miles away. Kids were 14 and 10. We hired movers and yes it was worth it (and yes I fed them!). The worst ” move” I did was cleaning out the parents house. Was very glad to have the help of my siblings to decide what to keep and what to toss.
August 13th, 2012 at 8:08 am
Last time I helped someone was a year ago and it was a family member in foreclosure…they weren’t packed and hadn’t rented a storage unit so we did more pack and loading of someone else’s vehicles.
I’m with Joey, if you have everything packed, labeled and ready to go and spring for food & beverages the move goes great!
August 13th, 2012 at 9:32 am
In the past I have used our friends and family for all moves. In 2008 & 2010 I had back surgery, so moving more then a few boxes by myself is not an option anymore. This last moe from Eagan to Rosemount we did hire movers to move everything, and do some setup of beds/crib as well. They did a great job, and could not have been more pleased. It was money well spent. If we didn’t have the funds to hire movers I would have had to beg/plead to get enough guys to move all of our stuff (and we have a lot of stuff).
It took the movers 9 hours to move my house one city south. I said we have a lot of stuff!
August 13th, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Labeling things, eh? That would suggest each box didn’t have things from the kitchen, office and bedroom all thrown together.
I did consider labeling when I packed to move. I did mostly label kitchen things, but the beauty of moving into a loft is that pretty much everything goes into the one big room. That probably helped speed up my move considerably.
August 13th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
Clarification: labeling where they go in the next house, not where they came from. If a box has a mish-mash, that’s fine, just tell the people helping you where it goes when you get to the destination.
August 13th, 2012 at 5:42 pm
The last time I moved was 7.5 years ago, from my old apartment about a mile away to my current place. It was pretty simple, since I rented a truck and had a bunch of people help me, plus I still had my apartment for a month after I moved into my townhome. That meant I was able to focus on the big/heavy things when I had people around to help me, and could go back for the smaller stuff and to finish cleaning during the following weeks.
The time I moved before that was in the middle of an ice storm. Yeah, hopefully not doing that ever again.
I plan to make my next move as simple as possible by getting rid of as much as I can bear to part with beforehand. I’m doing a good job of it already, since I’m pretty hardcore about getting rid of extraneous stuff. I don’t plan on bringing most of my furniture with me, for example, since most of it is either old, worn out, or both.
August 19th, 2012 at 7:02 am
[...] week’s poll asked how you went about moving your stuff. While I had been helping someone move to build up karma, I wondered if others would ask their [...]