If you’re like most guys and hit the weight room less often that you watch World’s Strongest Man reruns, tossing kegs and carrying boulders isn’t quite as easy as it looks on TV. Fortunately, as long as your bravado and pride doesn’t get in the way, there are plenty of tips and devices than will enable you to quickly and efficiently move heavy boxes and furniture to and from the moving truck.Tip 1: Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If anything, moving day can be a bonding experience, and a case of beer or round at the bar is usually all it will run if you are lucky enough to have a good friend or two who will lend a hand. If possible, avoid calling the friend who just moved back in with his parents or decided living with his girlfriend was a bright idea. When it comes time for that guy to move out, your name is going to be at the top of his list. Friends locked into a long term lease or with kids in the city’s top public school zone should be in high demand. (more…)

Heading down the highway at speeds of 60 miles per hour, with the suspension of a horse and buggy skidding across cobblestone, the back of your moving truck isn’t going to look quite like the mental picture you took just before closing the hatch. If you are not careful, your boxes can make like Mexican jumping beans and you’ll have to phone in the National Guard to come in for some clean up duty before moving in to your new place. These helpful tips when loading your moving truck should teach your boxes to sit and stay, without dropping a deuce all over the floor of your moving truck.Tip 1: Load the heaviest items in first. As a rule of thumb, before you load a big box chalk full of random mementos you are going to want to load whatever major appliance or piece of furniture was originally delivered in that box. If one or two items are significantly heavier than the rest of your stuff, make sure to set them on separate sides of the truck. Balance is key if you don’t want your truck or trailer to be doing the Ickey Shuffle side to side down the interstate. (more…)

Sure you set the school record at Tetris back in 1996 but while you were hammering away at your Gameboy in the back of math class you might have missed some of the more valuable, greater geometry themes that day. For example, a truck shaped rectangle of a certain area can only fit a certain number of squares of a smaller area before there is simply no more area left to fill. The overwhelming confidence you have at fitting things in tight spaces, as a result of your Gameboy glory days, may actually backfire when it comes time to select your moving truck. Moving trucks come in all shapes and sizes, with larger trucks obviously coming at a much higher renting price. The “I’m sure I can squeeze it in” defense holds up about as well as Shaggy’s “It wasn’t me,” so don’t choose the rental counter as your time to suddenly get cheap. (more…)

Once you’ve finally got everything out of your place and onto the truck you might think the work is done for a little while, time to just sit back and enjoy a relaxing drive to your destination. Then, all of a sudden, two words blind side you like the business end of a billy club: “Security Deposit.” If you ever want to see that king’s ransom you paid to actually move into your apartment, just so they could trust you weren’t running a dog fighting ring in your living room or playing medicine ball dodge ball, you’re going to have to make sure the place is spick and span. Here are some tips you might not think about, because it’s not like your landlord is going to let it slide when he decides to stick it to you one last time.Tip 1: You’ve probably spent a lot of time around the refrigerator over the year. After all, a stringent commitment to the pizza and beer diet doesn’t usually go down smooth when it’s stale and warm. What you may not know is that most refrigerators in rental units actually roll out fairly easily and you’d be surprised to see the assortment of god-knows-what that usually collects back there. You might have to bust out the broom and dustpan, or even a heavy duty trash bag, but your inspector will look back there, so you should too. (more…)

Before you bust out the weight belts and hit the heavy lifting, there is plenty of leg work even the women-folk can help with to get each room ready for moving day. Renting the truck can be expensive, no matter which company you choose, so you will want to make sure you get started as soon as you know you’re on the move. Despite what might have worked for your Intro to Literature exam on Seis de Mayo, waiting until the night before or morning of your big move to start preparing will cost you dearly. For those of you whose first time it is packing up the house or apartment, here are some helpful tips to make sure your place is ready:Tip 1: You can never have too many boxes. Try your local grocery store. They probably have more boxes than they know what to do with. It’s not like they are mailing in those bananas from Guatemala in little white envelopes. The last thing you want to do is come up few boxes short. Loose items in the back of a moving truck are the recipe for personal effects jambalaya, a bitter dish that takes a long time to digest and sort out. (more…)