So I have finally made it! I am in Dallas, Texas! And I am living in an amazing million dollar home! The only problem? It belongs to my girlfriend’s mother… So I haven’t quite made it yet. But I have started looking for apartments and a job.

The Moving Part

This move was relatively stress free for me. Basically, my brother is still living in Boston, where I started out, so I didn’t have to be super careful when combing over for my stuff. In fact, I left a good amount of my crap back in Boston; sure some of it was important stuff, like my knee brace and printer… But it will all make it here eventually.

Now to actually move the boxes, we chose to ship everything with DHL. We weren’t bringing any furniture, so we just shipped boxes. For about 15 boxes, it ended up costing around $300, which is a great price in my book. Unfortunately the service matched the price. The first shipment of 3 of the boxes was fine. The man rang the doorbell and brought them in for me. But the second shipment with the rest of the boxes was a little… let’s say, below par. Have a look for yourself:

As you can see, several boxes were badly damaged. I may have lost some items, but am not sure yet. The real kicker here, is that I think the driver wanted to avoid my wrath! Several of us were home all day, but the doorbell never rang. We later discovered the boxes behind the house in front of the garage. There was no notice, no email notification, no courtesy phone call; just a pile of heavily damaged boxes in the back. If you can, I would avoid using DHL, unless you can find awesome, indestructable boxes (I used standard, USPS approved shipping boxes).

So now I am here. Living with my girlfriends mom… but I see it as a leaping pad, more than a hole. I have given myself a dealine of 3 months. By then, I should have saved up enough money to start renting my own apartment and really get on my feet. Hopefully it will work out! Anyhow, here are some things I learned during this move as well as other resources:

6 Tips For Moving

1. Make an inventory list of your items in boxes (in case they break or get lost)
2. Consider using a container service, where the container is left at your house, you pack it, then the company picks it up and drives it (see UPack below)
3. For extremely delicate items, consider UPS’s packing service; they guarantee the safe shipment of your items.
4. Buy 3 more rolls of tape and 5 more boxes than you think you need. Chances are, you will need even more than that.
5. Use your luggage. Several of my boxes were actually pieces of luggage and they came here fine; they are already designed to take a beating.
6. Pack well ahead of time. I didn’t. I chose not to sleep the night before… This is not the best idea, nor the first time that I did that for a move.

Moving Resources

• Moving Calculator
• Moving Quotes
• Location Research
• UPS Pack and Ship
• UPack Container Moving Service

Do you have any moving tips of your own?