Life

4 Quick Lessons from Moving Houses (Revisited)

January 30, 2019
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What’s UP people!

Apologies for the mini hiatus everyone, but The Frugal Samurai is back online FINALLY.

Did ya miss me?

To quote a scholar “I’ve never left you. Been a faithful blogreader this whole time. Staying true”.

That’s my number one fan this is Stan.

For the rest of you, I can explain…

Last week, we’ve had a crazy week or so.

Getting ready to move out of our old place into our new, on top of housesitting for my parents and babysitting their dog, whilst juggling full-time work, meant that we literally had zero time for anything.

Whoa! This must be what parenthood is like… (it sucks!)

We’ve all been there… but Jim just took it to a whole new level.

Still, things have quietened down, we’ve finally escaped that crazy neighbour (read here), and also my parents are back.

I thought today we would revisit a popular post I wrote, coincidentally almost a year to the day (original here), on 4 lessons in moving places, which everyone can relate to, and mark myself on how I did this time…

Keep in mind it’s from a year ago! Hope you enjoy:

Take Inventory.

It wasn’t until we started packing that we realised exactly how much “stuff” we have. I mean do you need a dozen pairs of jeans? Most times you might only be wearing the same 2 or 3.

In fact we grossly underestimated how many boxes and packing containers were required to do the job.

You might not notice it day by day or week by week, but those little purchases do add up both in your bank balance and your wardrobe.

Moving out to a new place is a great opportunity to take inventory of what you currently own (and what to chuck out).

2018 Lesson: We’re trying to limit our spending on what we have now. By we I mean she…

2019 Revisited: I’m proud to report that we did alright in this department! Mainly because we used pretty much the same number of boxes and containers for this move that suggests not too much was added. Very glad to see that the spending plateaued since last time!

“405…406…407…408…409…410… we didn’t add any new stuff from last time honey, well done!”

Pack Early.

So obvious but so true, unfortunately MrsFrugalSamurai-to-be and I aren’t the most proactive of individuals when it comes to packing boxes.

We both had a very busy work schedule during the week, which explains why we were up at 3 am on Saturday morning still trying to dismantle the bed. Like a kick in the face when you’re down.

Looking back, I wonder how much simpler it would have been if we had both been motivated enough to pack a couple of items here and there throughout the week – instead of one last all-nighter binge reminiscent of cramming for end of year final exams.

2018 Lesson: Pack the non-essentials away early guys, will save a lot of headache and heartache.

2019 Revisited: Think that kick in the face was really painful because we definitely learnt our lesson this time round! Also the fact we foresaw the housesitting would take out a lot of free time, meant we started much earlier this – a full week before. Doing a hour here and an hour there REALLY helped. 

“A” class Removalists.

We thought that we would save time by hiring professional removalists who are yknow… professionals.
Unfortunately we were caught out by not researching online properly. The removal company who had 4+ stars in reviews, was good value and were quick to reply with our emails, well on the day they didn’t… show… up.

You see, at the beginning we thought that it was a standard delay – we waited, then waited, then waited some more – all the while speaking with the company who assured us that the removal team were on their way.
We canned them in the end – long story short, a phone call was made, voices were raised and words were said.

Luckily, I happen to get a kick out of making formal complaints against businesses to relevant government departments – I’m so glad they gave me an excuse to go through the process again.

Thank goodness we live in the age of disruptors for we managed to hire a 2nd removalist firm via Airtasker pronto.

2018 Lesson: Always double or triple confirm whether online reviews are valid and credible. There’s also great disruptor websites these days like Airtasker, Fiverr and Freelancer.com which you can use if you’re going to be hiring people to get the job done.

2019 Revisited: Definitely learnt our lesson here. I asked around nice and early for recommendations on removalists and glad that I did. Wasn’t gonna go through the BS of last time that’s for sure. Same goes with the professional cleaner which we hired.

Here’s another “removalist”.

Ask for help.

Seriously, I still don’t know why we didn’t just ask for our friends and family to help us move. It would have been a much more enjoyable experience (quicker too) in hindsight.

At the time, I spose we thought hiring professionals would be much easier.

Honestly though – hire a truck, grab a bunch of mates over, pay them in beer and away you go.

2018 Lesson: Not even a lesson, just common sense TheFrugalSamurai – let’s never go through this experience again.

2019 Revisited: Was considering doing this until we saw the weather forecast… was gonna be 40+ Celsius (104F). I… I’m not that cruel.

~~~

Whew, glad it’s all over now! And good to see that we’ve heeded our own words since before “shudders” to implement some much needed changes.

Overall the move and clean out went pretty well.

MrsFrugalSamurai is much happier this time round and that’s good enough for me.

So thanks for sticking with us guys!

Make sure you come back next time, as during this break I really took the time to think about how to make this blog even better – going to try out a whole bunch of new things in the future, should be fun!

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