Moving Again??

It seems like yesterday that I got a UPS shipment of 25 boxes to our little studio. And yet the time has already come for us to start packing up again. I can't imagine how New Yorkers who live in a one or two bedroom apartment move, much less an actual "house" or town home. Friends of ours recently found out that they were going to be relocated to Denver and had to pack up everything in just a week or so. It was super last minute. They have a one year old girl and a one bedroom apartment, and they had to hire a moving company to pack up and ship all of their stuff. Apparently movers in New York (and maybe in other towns too?) are a total rip off. No matter how good of a deal you think you got, you'll always end up getting screwed somehow. If they charge you an hourly rate, they drag their feet and take breaks every 10 minutes. If you are charged a flat fee, there are lots of hidden costs that spring up -- TV packaging cost, dining room table disassembly cost, mattress storage fee. Things that seem like they should be included in the initial rate, but which inevitably are not.

To avoid such frustrations (and because I'm a bit of a control freak) I decided to do everything myself, starting with finding a self-storage place. (Our current sublease ends before we'll get student housing, so we need storage -- standard minimum, one month). The first place I checked was Manhattan Mini Storage, a company with billboards plastered all over the city advertising rates as low as $29 / month. Awesome! I give them a call, ready for a great quote, and tell the guy I have about 50 cubic feet worth of junk to store. His lowest quote is $170 for a month ($159 if I sign up for 9 months!) which includes unlimited rides to and from the facility. It's worth the added cost, he says, because their units are clean and they are a family owned and operated company. Family owned? I don't care if it's my own family, I wouldn't pay close to $200 to store my junk for four weeks. Next.

After a few other calls (one had a $480 minimum for ANY storage) I finally found this great little place that brings the storage unit to you. They drop off these little closets, let you fill them with all your stuff, let you put your own lock on them, and haul them off to Harlem for storage until you're ready to get them. Then they bring them to your new place. One month for less than 70 bucks - done.

Now on to the next challenge: buying boxes. There are some companies that will rent you plastics tubs. They do everything, drop them off at your place and pick them up when you're done. Their service is a bit pricier than just buying cardboard boxes, but after my trip to Home Depot I realized why they can get away with it. New York is interesting in that, in a few square miles, you can literally buy almost anything in the world. Buying is not the challenging part. Getting it home is where the difficulty lies. I've needed to relearn this lesson more than once since moving here. I'll illustrate:

I show up to Home Depot to get my boxes as a conquistador would approach a new territory. I'm a little too confident. After all it's just cardboard, right? 

 I navigate my way to the basement (Home Depot has three floors. Or at least three that I found... probably more) and find rows and rows of storage boxes. I had done some searching online at different prices, and was delighted to find how inexpensive they were. Yes! I can get twice as many as I was anticipating. Plus, they buy back extras, and I don't want to make a second trip if I run out of boxes, right? Better get extras.

 After a few failed attempts to get the boxes to the cashier, I finally find a cart and load the boxes on. The aisles at this particular Home Depot are a bit narrower than in other Home Depots, so I almost knock over about 10 different items on my way to the register. But I make it! Someone helps me through the self-checkout, bundles the boxes together in two packs using twine, and sends me on my way.

 After knocking some woman's shoe off accidentally and stumbling down two flights of stairs, I am now at the turnstile entrance to the subway. There is, of course, a train about to leave as I approach. I stand there dumbly trying to figure out how to get my boxes through the turnstile as the train leaves. Briefly I consider chucking the whole package over the bars to the other side, but there were too many tourists around. Not that I didn't consider launching a package at one... but decided I couldn't make a quick enough get away. Anyway, the boxes were short enough to fit under the turnstile bar, but I didn't push them far enough and, after inserting my metro card and trying to squeeze through myself, ended up getting wedged in the middle of the two bars. I awkwardly moved back and forth, not sure how to get out, until someone finally pulled the boxes through for me (while laughing).

By the time I made it to the exit of the subway station, the boxes seemed like they had quadrupled in size. I lugged them up the last flight of stairs, tried to control them as they almost took flight in the wind, and squeezed them into our tiny elevator. And they have been sitting tied up since I got home, too lazy to start packing! Fortunately we don't have much stuff to pack, moving as often as we seem to.

Stay tuned for pictures of the storage closet, and eventually, of our new apartment! Always an adventure.