A year ago, my wife and I moved from California to Idaho. With no job lined up, and only one job since graduating college, the move and everything after was full of stress. It was my first long-distance move since I was 7 years old, and the first where it was just my wife and I. If you value a relationship with anyone you move with, or even just your sanity, learn from my mistakes.
1. Get rid of it
Have you ever thought to yourself, “I have too much stuff?” We didn’t, and it turns out we were wrong. Boxes of books, bed frames, mattresses – enough for two moving trucks. We only had one moving truck. It had only been a couple years since we moved out of the dorms from college, but the amount of junk we collected and didn’t need was staggering. If you are moving to a college not in your hometown, and using just your can to move, this tip is even more important. We were going to need to make a second trip, back to California, reload, and go back to Idaho – 540 miles one way. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We should have had a garage sale, or hired a service to take away our junk for donation and recycling. I mention this because you can keep packing while they haul things away for you. This will be important soon. As for the things you want to keep, be brutal. Haven’t used it in 6 months, and you aren’t going to use it any time soon? Toss it.
2. Have a job lined up
I had a few interviews lined up for after we arrived, but I was relying on the experience from a couple years at a professional newspaper combined with being one of the newspaper editors at my college. It wasn’t enough.
It was nine months before I got a job. Not having a job waiting for me put additional stress on the move itself, not knowing if we would have two incomes or just one. This isn’t as important for college students, but anyone who has just graduated should be warned before just packing up and moving.
3. Professionals pack faster
The yellow moving truck – we named it Sven – took far longer to pack than anticipated. Despite leaving my job three weeks before the move day, packing the entire time, boxes at the ready, we still didn’t finish packing the first night we had Sven. We hired a couple guys to do it for us, and they did in two hours what took us all the previous day. Spending the money is worth it, even if you are broke and right out of college.
Bonus tip: Rent the truck for longer than you think you will need it. You can always return it early. We never imagined we would need it for nearly a week, rather than the planned three days.
On June 24, 2015 – just 10 days after our first anniversary – my wife fired Sven up while I drove her car. Fun fact: In 2015, Idaho was ranked second in people moving into the state vs. moving out, with 63 percent of moves inbound. With three good country stations on the radio instead of just one in Sacramento, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
4. Hit the road early
We left California just before noon, after the guys finished packing Sven. We had about 540 miles to go, and we didn’t arrive at our new apartment until just after midnight. Plan to leave early, and learn from us – don’t arrive under the cover of darkness if possible. It’s harder to find things, and in our case, we had to weave around construction on a highway we had never navigated. Driving 10 hours will make you tired and irritable enough as it is.
5. Don’t rent sight-unseen
Photos on the internet don’t tell the full story. The apartment complex we decided on while our house was being built was just across the street from a psych ward.
It was the right price, but we had no idea what the location was like, having only spent a few weekends in Idaho. It turns out it was literally on the other side of the tracks.
To make matters worse, my wife scraped a car as she was trying to park Sven. Everyone was parked for the night, there wasn’t room for a moving truck. Luckily, the only damage was to Sven. And, smart bonus advice part two, we opted for damage insurance. We were covered, and the other car didn’t even have a mark on it. But our nerves were fried, and it was now 12:30 a.m. There was freaking out and quiet yelling.
To recap, we were exhausted, aching from what packing we did, and in a very unfamiliar area across from a psych ward. We walked up the stairs to the two-room apartment and reached our breaking point.
It really tells you something about the management when the website says the room is non-smoking, but when you open the door, it smells like someone chain-smoked inside for a decade straight. We tried to turn on the light inside the door. Nothing. On closer inspection, it actually was on, but was a black light. My wife snapped; we couldn’t stay here, she told me, and rushed out the door. She sat on the curb and cried while I paced back and forth, figuring out what to do about a living situation that wouldn’t work.
6. Beware managers who will do anything for a lease
It was suddenly obvious why the complex manager was willing to let us give them a check the next morning, when we were supposed to sign the lease papers. Without a signed lease agreement, we finally decided to slowly back away, rip up the check, and never return.
7. Have a backup plan
We were officially homeless, 540 miles away from everything and everyone we knew. It was close to 1 a.m. when we called the hotel we stayed at during our trips out to find a house. No vacancies, but the front desk had a tip of a hotel that had one room still open. At least we had a bed for the night, with a large parking lot across the street for Sven.
The next morning was a blur of breakfast and apartment listings. Most places either didn’t have any openings, or wouldn’t do a six-month lease. A complex just outside of downtown had recently finished a new building, with brand-new apartments. It wasn’t finished when we originally searched for a place to live, but was now leasing. It was only one bedroom for the same cost as the two-bedroom we were supposed to have, but it also wasn’t a drug den straight out of a movie. They could get us moved in after a background check and a 24-hour waiting period.
8. Know where the nearest urgent care facilities are located
We knew we were going to need a storage unit even before the apartment fiasco, and had used a size estimator to figure out what to take – my mother-in-law was going to move in with us in about six months, so we took some of her stuff. We were unprepared for needing to move everything we had into the already rented unit.
We started unpacking things from the truck by ourselves. We didn’t learn from our packing experience. It was also the hottest week of the year in Boise; June 27 and 28, it was 106 and 110 degrees. Our thermometers showed 113 on June 28. The two of us trying to move two mattresses and other heavy pieces of furniture that wouldn’t fit in our new one-bedroom apartment, combined with the heat, and being tired, was enough to almost break us. And then I dropped a wooden hutch on her ankle. Cue pooling blood.
It’s surprisingly hard to find an open doctor’s office after 3 p.m. on a Thursday in Idaho. Not only was the nearest office closed, but the doctor had gone home early because she was sick. It took another 20 minutes to find an Urgent Care facility that was open. We left at about 5:20 p.m., back to the hotel and ordered delivery from a local restaurant.
9. Seriously, hire people to do the heavy lifting
This is important enough to repeat myself. We hired more helpers for moving our stuff out of the truck and into storage. When done, we quickly fled the state, back to California, to load the truck once again. We again hired someone to do the heavy lifting; we were starting to learn. Less than 24 hours later, we were back on the road to Idaho.
10. Celebrate
On June 27, we officially started our Idaho living in our new apartment. Getting the hang of this, we hired the same guys who had unpacked the truck the first time to help with managing the storage unit and getting the stuff we needed into the apartment. We celebrated with Pendleton Canadian Whisky in our fancy champagne flutes from our wedding – because why not? Amazingly enough, my wife and I didn’t kill each other or serve divorce papers after the move.
What have we learned from the moving trip from hell? Hire people to pack and unpack moving trucks. Make sure you see, in person, your apartment before signing anything or handing over money. Have a backup ready to check out anyway. Check the forecast for when you are moving. Know where the closest doctors or Urgent Care facilities are. Opt for the damage insurance for the moving truck. Get food delivered the first day after moving in. And know where the alcohol and appropriate glasses are for when you are ready to celebrate a successful move.