Uff. Yeah, I have this going on now. My mother passed two years ago and my sisters and I had to do the full house go-through and divvy up what we wanted and didn’t want, etc. And now I have 1/5 of a spare bedroom with stuff I really didn’t need and I’m not sure what to dispose of. It’s hard. :(
My mother had over a 55-gallon trash bag worth of Beanie Babies. Three closets full of clothes. Mounds of trash. Fortunately, none of the furniture other than a couple of pieces my father had made (kitchen table and a dry-sink) were worth keeping, and my sister took both of those. I got my grandfather’s guns and most of my dad’s tools.
WOW, yeah you have us beat. Consider all of that stuff tasks and chores we just never think about until it’s time to do it. It’s tough and emotional but also nostalgic and funny too. There was a lot of bonding going on while we did it.
It definitely can be an odd ride. I’m thankful I’ve never had to do it in a hurry.
Cleaning through my mom’s stuff—about 10 years after the fact, since my dad held onto most of it after she died—I found all kinds of things that I had made for her when I was a little kid. They didn’t mean anything to me, except they meant something to my mom, and pitching it felt very circular and weird.
How does one in the modern world hire someone for like an hour?
I tried to cheap out and not hire a moving company. This was a huge mistake… not without three or four bros to help out. Now half my stuff is stuck in one city, and i’m unable to get it out of the house, and the rest of the stuff is stuck downstairs waiting to get moved upstairs. Great.
All i really need though are a couple of guys to move a washer and dryer up some stairs. I mean i can almost do it myself, i can get to the 3rd or 4th step, but without leverage behind me i can’t quite manage.
But all the moving companies want like $350-600 for 5 minutes of work, with most of them demanding a minimum of two hours of labor.
I know my sister hires people all the time online but i don’t know what to google here. “Day labor” “hire help for an hour” brings up like hourly warehouse jobs. I don’t know what to type into the search bar, basically.
Is there an app for it? I look on Craiglist, but again, i’m not typing in the concept in to the search bar, or know where to look. Facebook marketplace? Not really sure. It’s just incredibly annoying that as far as i can tell 5 minutes worth of pure grunt work (that i can almost do myself) is going to cost me a minimum of $300 and i can’t locate another solution.
Try Taskrabbit? You could also look on Craigslist or Yelp for local movers.
Taskrabbit. There you go. Thanks. Let me look that one up.
Facebook—even if you hate it, make a burner account. Join a buy/sell group for your area. Post.
Honestly? We used to go down to the parking lot at Home Depot. There was always a group of fellows–mostly immigrants, probably mostly not in the US legally–who would hang around waiting for somebody to pull up and offer day work.
I’m dubious that would work these days,.
Depending on where you are in the US, you can often find day laborers at various sites – around here (DC area) there’s a group outside Home Depot, a group outside the U-Haul place, and there’s actually a designated day laborer hiring center run by the county government a few miles from my house. I think the availability of such labor is highly dependent on there being laborers willing to do that work in your community, however.
Make sure you pay whoever you hire fairly, whether they’re documented or not.
This. Very much this. One more than one occasion I had day laborers try to hand me money back, saying I was paying them too much. I didn’t consider $20/hour to be overpaying, I kinda felt guilty not giving more.
There’s no way in hell I’m clicking that link! While I’m comfortable with my sexuality, I don’t need to see hunk junk.
I ended up using a different company when I moved last, but this moving guide helped a bit. There were definitely some things in there I hadn’t considered that would have been a headache if I had to deal with them on moving day. Be sure to have some cash on hand to tip the movers to. Apparently it’s an expectation, which I didn’t realize.
So I am moving cross-country in about a month. And I’m still weighing different moving options, and I am curious to hear about any experiences using PODs or Upack container style services.
It sounds perfect for my loading. I can make an open parking space right in front of my house to drop it off and load up. Great!
But I’m really worried about the drop-off/unload at my new place. It’s a great place to live, but there’s very little parking and I’m imagining the container will need to be pretty rapidly unloaded and removed same day. Like within a few hours.
Would love to hear from anyone on their experiences.
If you’re ever offered the opportunity to either move across the country, or to get a swift kick in the nuts…I strongly recommend the swift kick in the nuts.
I’m assuming the PODs didn’t work out, Trig? What happened?
Oh, no! I hope it’s regular levels of aggravation and hassle and not outrageously calamitous moving problems. Been thinking of you and hoping it’s all going okay. Hope you get settled soon. 👍
It’s fine. Pod is crawling across America.
But the whole “Hey, building your furniture from IKEA is kind of fun” thing has gone to “I don’t wanna do this any more.”
Also, “3rd, floor, no elevator” sounded fine when I rented this place. And it probably still is! But carrying 40-50 pound deliveries from Amazon up those steps is a feeling I’ll be happy to experience a little less in coming weeks.
Oh yeah, that sucks. I think if I have to build a significant amount of furniture again I’ll just use TaskRabbit.
You’re using an electric screwdriver, right? I don’t know if I ever could have done it without one.