A few months ago, we sold our house and moved to a different neighborhood in the same city. In all our other moves, we used a traditional packing and moving service. It always involved a whirlwind team of people at our house who packed things right from under your nose. I am a bit of a control freak and that always left me feeling completely out of balance. Most of the time, we would have the majority of things packed ahead of time and let the movers do the big stuff. The more we packed, the more unrecognizable the rooms would become and we could barely move around all the stacks of boxes. We always wished we had a garage or staging area for all the packed boxes, so we could at least still have space to live while we were packing. The pods storage concept did not even cross our minds. We only saw two ways to do this. We hire movers or we do it all ourselves.
This move was different. Upon on a recommendation from a friend, we used one of those pods storage companies. They delivered the storage unit to our curb. It was a big square metal thing (they come in different sizes) with big doors and a huge lock. For eight days, that pods storage unit sat conveniently for our moving needs. We would come home from work, have some dinner and a glass of wine (okay, I am making it sound more enjoyable than it really was), pack a couple boxes and move them out of the house and into the container. We took our time packing, which was a nice change from previous harried moves. We decided to hire some people to take care of all the heavy stuff and furniture moving for us. The pods storage company gave us a recommendation, so we did not even have to do any of the leg work to find movers. The day before the container was scheduled to be picked up, the movers moved our furniture and heavy boxes for us. A truck moved the storage from our house to the new house within a matter of hours.
The day you move can try even the most patient person. But if you also have to unpack the same day you packed, it can bring you to tears. The pods storage container can sit in the new location for a few days, allowing you to slowly unpack it. Our furniture and heavy boxes were offloaded by movers (we hired the same guys we hired in the packing phase) that day. We took our time to unpack the rest, which allowed us to get organized and not feel overwhelmed. When we were all unpacked, the pods storage people picked the container up and we were all done. You can also store your unit via the pods storage company in an air conditioned and heated warehouse, if you are making a long distance move.
It was much less stressful and more cost effective to hire pods storage. We had the storage unit for a total of three weeks and it ran us about the same amount we would have paid to lease a U haul for a weekend. It did not take us weeks to figure out where things were or remember what was packed with what. See also Portable moving container ... Packrat ... Self storage ... Moving ...