Tim and I have been married for 9 1/2 years. We have been together for 12 years. Since we have been a couple, we moved a grand total of 10 times. TEN TIMES!!!! The first 3 times we were in college, hauling our stuff from dorm room to dorm room. It was a pain, but we helped each other, and we each only had a room full of stuff.

Once we got married, Our collection grew immensely. But we lived in Boston in an apartment the size of a shoe box (seriously, it was like 400 square feet). I remember getting a quote from a moving company to move our stuff from Boston to Memphis for us. It was over $3,000 dollars! For 400 square feet of stuff! The entire contents of our home weren’t worth that much at that time, so we opted to sell most of our furniture (particle board stuff, not really worth moving, anyway). We packed everything we owned into a trailer that hitched behind our car. I believe that was one of Tim’s proudest moments in life, because it required that he pack with the precision of a Tetris master. In some places, it was so tight that you couldn’t slip a piece of paper between the boxes. But we did it!

The next time we were ready for a move, we did hire some college students to help us with the loading and unloading of boxes. That helped a bit, but the bulk of the work was left to us, and even in our mid twenties, we were starting to feel too old for it! 🙂

When we moved last year, we were in a completely different position for moving in that we were going to have to figure out how to do it with a baby. We realized that the complete DIY move was no longer going to work for us, but hiring a moving company was still not something we could afford. We opted for one of those portable storage devices, and that was a really great solution for us as a family.

First and foremost, we could load up the storage shed at our own pace. This meant that we could work on moving for a little bit of time after work each night, and as much as we could on the weekends, while also being able to take breaks when we needed to spend time with the baby.

Second, we could exercise the same slowed-down pace when it was time to move into our new place. Since we didn’t have any family or friends in town to help us, it was WONDERFUL to be able to unpack over the course of a week. That saved our sanity, for sure.

Third, not having to drive a moving truck was REALLY nice. It is a 6 hour drive from Memphis to Chattanooga, and at the time we moved, we had a little one who had just turned 1. She was no longer quiet and happy on long car rides, and she required a great deal of attention. There was NO WAY that I was going to be able to make that drive by myself in the car with a brand new toddler while Tim drove the truck. We were SO glad to not have to do that.

While we really enjoyed moving this was as opposed to the total DIY way we had done it in the past, we have heard from many different friends that actually hiring a moving company is the best money they have ever spent. One of my friends just completed a move, and said that the movers got all the stuff off the truck and into her new place in 2 hours. That’s pretty incredible, I have to say!

Long distance moving is a real pain, and hopefully you don’t have to do it too many times in your life. I know we are hoping to be done with it for at least the next 18 years! 🙂 But whether you are moving across the nation or across town, know that there are some flexible options that might take a bit of the sting out of the moving process. If you can’t afford to hire a moving company for the entire trip, you can even hire one set of movers to load the truck in one city, and another set of movers to unload the truck in the other city. If we move long distance again, I think that’s exactly what we will do!

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