Month: June 2018

If you need to buy boxes for a residential move, how can you tell how many you need?

Cardboard boxes are a staple of any residential move. But how can you tell how many you really need? They don’t come cheap, as you can expect to pay several dollars or more for each, depending on the size and features of the box. Therefore, you might want to buy as few as possible.

On the other hand, you can probably imagine the frustration if you are just a few boxes short of packing up all the contents left in your home. To avoid this frustrating scenario, you’ll want to carefully calculate how many boxes you need. Keep reading for four factors to consider when determining how many boxes your move requires.

Rough Guidelines

A very, very rough rule of thumb is that you’ll need about 30 boxes for every bedroom your home has. But this is subject to adjustment depending on several variables.

Variable #1: Type of Home

A detached home will generally need more boxes than an apartment or condominium, even if the number of bedrooms is the same. This is because detached homes often have larger rooms and may even have an additional building, such as a garage. This will add to the number of items that need packing.

Variable #2: Lifestyle

Are you someone who likes to collect things? Or maybe you consider yourself a pack rat? If so, you’ll need more boxes than someone who lives a minimalist lifestyle.

Variable #3: Number of People Living in Your Home

Just because your home has a lot of bedrooms or square footage, that doesn’t automatically mean you need more boxes. If you’re the only person living in a five bedroom, 5,000 square foot home, you will probably need fewer boxes than a family of four living in a 3,500 square foot home with four bedrooms.

Variable #4: Size of Boxes

The bigger the box, the more stuff you can put inside. So, if you have one box that has twice the volume as a smaller box, you’ll need two smaller boxes for every large box. But this ratio is subject to change, depending on what you put in the box. For instance, you cannot completely fill a large box – one that is roughly 20 inches on each side – with textbooks. If you did, it would be almost impossible for one person to move and you would likely tear the box during transport.

If you want extra guidance for figuring out how many cardboard boxes you’ll need for your residential move, think about giving our moving professionals at Nilson Van and Storage a call today.

Moving takes money, but there are some associated moving costs that many people seem to miss.

Some associated moving costs are clear, such as the price of boxes, the cost of hiring a moving company or the fee for renting a moving truck. Other costs aren’t as obvious but equally necessary. To learn about some of these less obvious moving costs that you might have missed, continue reading!

1.Fuel

If you’re doing the moving yourself, fuel will be a notable cost. How big this cost is will depend on how far the move is and what needs moving. But even transporting the contents of a typical family move in a rental truck across only a few states away can easily result in several hundred dollars in fuel costs for that one trip.

2.Lost Time

A major hidden moving cost is the time the move will take you away from your job. For example, if you have to take a day off from work to drive a moving truck yourself, you’re not only paying for the cost of the truck rental, but for one day’s worth of lost income. Sure, you might use a paid vacation or sick day, but that’s one less paid day off you could use for something else or less money in your final paycheck when you eventually leave your job.

3.Insurance

Whether you complete the move yourself or hire a company to handle it for you, you’ll need to consider having insurance to protect the items in the move and the rental truck moving those items. Without insurance, if something goes wrong that’s not your fault in any way, you may still have to pay the price of repair or replacement. And adding extra insurance for the move can easily amount to several hundred dollars.

If you want advice on how to handle the move and what sort of associated moving costs you may need to consider, please contact our team at Nilson Van and Storage.

Before you move internationally, be sure you take care of the necessary requirements.

If you’re moving internationally, then you will complete one of the most complicated types of moves. To make sure it goes as uneventfully as possible, you’ll want to comply with the following four basic requirements:

#1: Possess Current Passports

This sounds like a no-brainer, but in the mad rush and craziness to plan an international move, people tend to forget all about having a current passport. Not only should your passport be current, but you should be careful to ensure it won’t expire until well after you finish the move.

Some visa or immigration documents are only available to those with a passport that is not only current, but won’t expire for a set period, such as six months. Also, even if such government bureaucracy isn’t an issue for you, you’ll want enough time and flexibility to take an extra trip or two across the border or in case there is a delay in your moving date. Finally, getting a new passport in your adopted country should be much easier with a current passport from your previous home country.

#2: Have All Necessary Legal Documentation

When you move internationally, you’ll need to have all your basic legal documentation handy, such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, professional licenses, diplomas/degrees, wills and a power of attorney. Make extra copies of these important documents, too.

#3: Make New Financial Arrangements

You’ll want to set up a new bank account and, if necessary, new retirement accounts and insurance policies.

#4: Get Rid of Anything Not Allowed In Your New Country

Before the move, you’ll need to make sure you don’t bring anything you’re not allowed to possess or use in your new country. Some things will be obvious, like firearms, but others less so, like certain toys (some radio-controlled toys use radio frequencies that civilians may not use) or medications.

If you plan the international move carefully and well in advance, you should be fine. But to have that extra help with the move, consider using a moving company that deals with international moves, like Nilson Van and Storage. Get in touch with our team today to get the answers to your moving questions and to schedule the professional moving services you need.

A cross-country move is a major undertaking that requires planning.

Moving cross country can cost a lot of money and produce a great deal of stress. There are so many tasks you have to arrange to make sure things go smoothly. You can reduce some of the anxiety and work involved in a long distance move, but it usually results in a higher cost for the trip. Regardless of whether you try to save money and handle the move on your own or spend the extra money to hire a moving company to handle everything, here is some advice to make the trip go as well as possible.

Plan Early

The earlier you plan the move, the easier and cheaper it will be. There are several reasons for this. First, making reservations are almost always going to be cheaper when made far in advance compared to making a reservation at the last minute. If you’re flying yourself to your new home, plane tickets will be cheaper. If you book hotels rooms for a multi-day drive, the cost for the rooms will often be more affordable.

The cost of a moving truck rental or hiring a moving company may not be less expensive if booked early, but it certainly provides greater scheduling flexibility. This can indirectly result in lower costs; the flexibility allows you to shop around for the best deal for moving supplies or hiring moving professionals.

Second, knowing well in advance about a move allows you to make more efficient use of your resources. We can use an example to demonstrate. Let’s say you know where you’re moving. You don’t have a house or apartment set up yet, but you know what town or city will serve as your new home. During a drive to this new location to do a house or apartment search, you can pack extra items in your luggage that you’ll need to move when you finally switch homes.

For example, if you only need to pack three days’ worth of clothing and toiletries for the house hunting trip, go ahead and fill up the entire car with stuff you won’t need at your current home. Then, put all that stuff in a small, cheap storage unit. The rental cost of a month or two of a storage unit may be worth the cost savings of avoiding an extra car or moving truck trip later on.

Conclusion

The best way to ensure the best possible long distance move is to plan well and do so as early as possible. If you decide on using professional moving help for the cross-country move, contact Nilson Van and Storage at 1-800-845-2682 as soon as you learn of the move.