The Ultimate Guide to Moving In-State: From Apartment to House

While moving across town may have its advantages over moving across a country, its still no easy task. While we are working to move back home to my mom’s, I wanted to compile a guide of tips, tricks, and hacks that have helped us along the way.

Note: we’re moving from an apartment across town (about 20 or so minutes away) to my mom’s house. This is arguably one of the easiest moving situations so not all of these tips may not apply to your move. 😛

1 month out:

Pick your moving day. Kind of obvious but having a day in mind that considers your helpers, lease termination, and schedule helps with all things planning. When would be the best time to move for you? If it rains or something else happens, do you have a back up day? Note: Late summer is the busiest time to move, especially because school is getting ready to start again. Take that into consideration along with, perhaps, how it may affect traffic or availability of rental trucks.

Started changing our addresses on bills and utilities. It helps that we visit my mother every weekend so we’re over there a lot anyway. From this point on and if you can, send any new purchases aka Amazon packages to your new address. That way, you don’t have to worry about packing them back up.

Assembling boxes together so they are ready for packing. While we still have some time to actually pack our belongings, having the boxes up and ready to go was a helpful reminder to get a move on with packing. I’m a visual person so seeing the boxes assembled and empty kind of prompted me to get to it and filling them up! Side note: get yourself some good tape and preferably a tape dispenser.

Move some things that you aren’t going to need for a while. As I mentioned, we go over to my mom’s once a week anyway so we were able to load up our car with some smaller boxes or with things that we didn’t want to worry about putting into the Uhaul when we got it. If you have access and are already visiting the new place, take advantage. Clear as much area in the new place as possible so you can accommodate your items when you move in. You can worry about unpacking and organizing later. Just plan a time to clear out the space to be available beforehand.

We also had the opportunity to organize some of her things so that we could make space for our own. My biggest goal for this move was not to displace or overwhelm my mom with all of our stuff.

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3 Weeks out:

Went through closet and determined what was donation, trash, or needed repairs. Luckily, I have 3 bins I use for this system already so this part was a cake walk. Read my other blog post about this system here.

Planned our packing goals. Realistically we both knew that setting aside 3 straight days to pack up everything was not going to happen. Between work, his online class, my laziness, we had to accommodate and realize that we really had to focus on doing a little bit each day. While he’s not the biggest fan of my bazillion color-coded calendars, I created calendar events of each day’s packing goals to help keep both of us on track. For example, day 1, review office closet. Day 2: review dresser drawers.

Reserved our moving truck. If you aren’t moving too far away from where you currently live, make sure you do the in-town Uhaul trick (basically pick up and return your Uhaul from the same location). Otherwise, you’re looking at almost double the moving van rental cost for the convenience of returning the truck to a location near your new home. If that’s worth it to you, ok, but for us, we rather just take a short drive. Note: this “hack” may not work with other companies. For example, an “out of town” move with Penske was actually cheaper than an in-town move. You’ll see why we ended up renting with Penske later…*subtle eye roll*

Schedule help with friends and family. If you’re not relying on movers, maybe you don’t have a ton of stuff and can manage with yourself and your partner and a couple of buddies. There are some heavier pieces though that I rather not bother with. Also, depending on how many helpers you have, maybe you don’t need EVERYONE there all at once. You can schedule shifts so that no one is there all day. In fact, if you have a crowd of people, they’ll just end up in each other’s way anyway.

Talk about items you want to sell or donate. What is your actual plan to rid yourself of the items? If your friend wants your couch, maybe you can work out a deal where you deliver the couch the day you have the truck as well? Begin posting items on Facebook marketplace so you have time to coordinate.

2 Weeks out:

Sell those items you listed on Facebook marketplace. Be safe, meet in daylight, but get it done.

Start disassembling furniture you don’t need to use right now. As much as you’d like to think that you’re going to NEED a piece of furniture, ask yourself if you can manage for now without it. If the answer is yes, take a screwdriver to it, fold it up, rearrange it so you don’t have to worry about it later. Lean it against a wall or stick it somewhere where it’s not going to be in the way.

Meal plan. When is the last time you’ll be cooking at home? Do you have room in your budget to order in or do take out?

1 Week out:

Pack unneeded pantry items. Make sure they are sealed and closed before adding to its container. If you’re putting them into a cardboard box, be sure to label the outside for easily identifying later. Now is also a perfect time to be realistic and address what has not been eaten… and will never be eaten. Come on, now. I can’t be the only one who has a box of unused, unbothered Lasagna noodles.

Pack everything but the necessities. I’m talking clothes that you can live without (ie. most of them, amirite?!), books, decor, etc. Here’s some clever moving hacks to consider as you take on packing:

• Put all your books (which tend to be pretty heavy and dense items) into rolling luggage. Your back will thank you later!
• DIY space bags for clothes
• Hanging Bag hack and 17 more hacks!
• I didn’t pack the items in our dressers. I removed each drawer, allowed my fiance and dad to move the dresser into the truck, then reinserted each drawer back in place.
• 101 Moving Tips and Hacks: some of these might be repeats but it’s worth a glance.

Label, label, label. As you are packing, you’re going to find that obviously not everything will fit seamlessly into its designated box. The 7 boxes I designed for solely kitchen items might have to make room for camping items, for example. As long as I wrote out what the contents were on the box, I was a happy camper (see what I did there?). I actually used tape with 3×5″ white, blank, index cards or even Post-it notes (these still need tape btw) and took my sawheet time writing out what each box contained before taping the box up for good. Note: PUT YOUR LABELS ON THE SIDE OF YOUR BOXES, NOT ON TOP. If it was fragile, I added this tag as well. Since we are planning to store a lot of our items in my mom’s overflow spaces, I wanted to be sure I could easily know what was inside a box without having to open it back up 2 or 3 years from now.

Create cleaning supply station/pile/box. If you’re moving from your apartment, you know that you kind of have to do some cleaning before handing over the keys to the landlord before completely ending your relationship with your apartment.

• Vacuum cleaner
• Carpet powder
• paper towels
• Pinesol/disinfectant spray
• magic eraser
• a couple of rags
• broom
• duster
• mop
• Febreze
• Stove top drip pans

One last thing, make sure you have your dolley lined up (air is in the tires and it’s available for use).

The day before:

Pack your freezer/refrigerator items into a large cooler. If you can make a separate trip to your new home with the cooler, more fragile items like covered monitors, computers, cameras, etc., do it. You’ll have SO MUCH peace of mind knowing that your more fragile items aren’t flailing around in the back of your moving truck.

Get a good night’s sleep. If you’re moving your own stuff, you won’t be worth anything if you are a zombie who can’t operate a dolley or lift any boxes. Do yourself a favor a rest up. Also, get the protein powder ready for tomorrow because you’re probably going to be sore with all the moving. We love Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard 100% Whey Protein Powder, French Vanilla Creme because it mixes easily with whatever fruit we have.

The day of (REALITY):

A moving truck hiccup. We had scheduled our Uhaul rental truck 3 weeks out as noted however, we had a huge hiccup with this. After this experience, I don’t think we’ll be renting with them again. Upon arriving to our reservation location on time at 10am, we were told that they didn’t have our truck available and while our “reservation was guaranteed, the location is not.” We were told to go to another Uhaul up the road. No problem. We go. Turns out they don’t have our truck either. After waiting almost 40 minutes, we were told to go to yet another Uhaul location across town in Decatur to pick up a now updated 11:30am reservation. Our truck never became available, despite there being over half a dozen trucks on the lot. So that’s 3 different Uhaul locations in one day. We were so thankful we DIDN’T ask or PAY friends or movers for help with moving. They would have be waiting for nothing.

After this experience, I don’t think we’ll be renting with Uhaul again.

Deep breath in, deep breath out, ya’ll.

We quickly adapted and tried Penske instead. As soon as I booked with them online at their Atlanta Home Depot location, I received a phone call confirming my reservation. Renting with Penske was a complete breeze and while their price point was higher than Uhaul, it was well worth it. They were professional, kind, and punctual. It was much appreciated after the waiting game we played earlier in the day. The guy who gave us the keys actually said, “Yeah, most of our customers are people whose reservations fall through with Uhaul.”

At the third Uhaul location, the front desk lady told us to call their 1800GoUhaul Number and we got the runaround for another 40 minutes. When it became clear that no one was going to help us, I took a picture of their location and tagged them on my Instagram story. It was only through my dms that they reached out and offered a solution. They refunded us $50 for the inconvenience of everything which was better than nothing.

The move went smoothly aside from a brief rain storm. Some day-of tips:

1. Call the moving truck company before you drive over there.
2. Treat yourself and your helpers by going out to eat. Trust me, you’re not going to want to cook after moving all your stuff. Budget for this ahead of time.
3. If it does rain, don’t feel like all hope is lost. Think of what you can bring out/in to/from the truck that a few drops won’t hurt. Use the rain as a chance for a break.
4. Moving blankets. Layout all the moving blankets onto the floor of the truck before starting. They will help you move heavier items around while also protecting them.
5. Have your first-aid kit available. Dry skin and cardboard are not a good mix.

General tips

1. Don’t use Uhaul if you live in a busy city. Atlanta is one of them.
2. If you can afford movers, it might be worth the splurge. But what you save on time, you’ll spend in money. What you’ll spend on time, you’ll save in money…as with most things in life.

The good news: we hope that this will be the last move until we move into our own house. Because we are using many of my mother’s items instead of our own, we don’t have to unpack our things and most will stay packed until this future move happens.

All in all, it was a really stressless move. It was obviously time consuming but that’s usually the pay off when you want to save money.

Anywho, I hope this blog post helps you and yours plan for your current or future move! Even if you are moving to a house or another apartment, I’m sure you can apply some of these tips!

Comment below if you have any additional tips!