Moving Done - waiting for the shoe to drop

Tags: moving, movers, home economics.

We finished the move.
Am waiting for the movers to send the bill. Unlike most movers, I'm able to pay them with a credit card.

The move itself took two days:
1st 3 men for a total of 29 man hours
2nd 4 men for a total of 51 man hours

I've deducted 45 minutes each day for their lunch times - I hope we won't battle over this point, but I see no reason to pay them to eat.

I expect an average rate of $40 per hour per man.

Best practice: Count boxes
I have no idea exactly how many boxes were used, but my best guess is about 8 boxes day 1 and about 24 boxes day 2. All boxes are priced differently. I'm guessing it will come to $200, but I'm adding a $300reserve in case I'm wrong and to account for the 40 book boxes I bought from them.

All in all, I expect to ower about $3000, which puts me $3750 into the move. Almost all the fees were for moving with a little minor packing.

This would bring me in about $50 over their estimate, which isn't bad at all, except for the large total amount.

We spent an insance amount of time packing our own possessions. The movers estimated that packing could have cost $4k alone if they had done it.

This leads to several thoughts:

a. we simply have far too much stuff - we must get rid of it. Objectively, we almost alway move every 3 years or sooner. We are paying a fortune to have our crap packed and moved. Right now we still have quite a bit in storage.

New Resolution: Lose the STUFF

If we can't sell it we might as well donate it. Donating will get us 41.25% of market value. Not so bad considering how much work selling it all on ebay would yield. I doubt a garage sale would yield any benefit close to that. Perhaps an auction?

b. we're paying to store stuff we can't fit into the house - let's lose most of that stuff, too. Stuff costs money.

c. It's better to have money in the bank or in investments than in stuff you don't use.

New Resolution: Unpack the STUFF

Keeping stuff in storage just doesn't make sense. Especially if you have a big house. Unpack it and force yourself to deal with it.

Here are a few of the doosies we found:

1. a full of 24 containers of fruit juice
2. a box of canned goods
3. 3 way overdue library books we thought were lost

Stuff we still can't find:

1. more library books we know are buried in there
2. Some great finance books
3. Several cases of wine

Financial Debriefing:

Spent budget as planned.
Must dramatically reduce number of possessions and brick brack.
Concern: we are overpurchasing / addicted consumers, otherwise how would we acquire more than we can house?

Any thoughts?

Have a wonderful Tuesday,
makingourway

PS We're still unpacking. We'll save the boxes in the storage unit for the next move. Unpacking goes very quickly until all of the obvious places are full.