10 Tips & Tricks for Your Next Partial DITY Move

Happy Monday friends! I hope you had a nice weekend and enjoyed a little bit of r&r with your loved ones. On Friday I realized we had zero plans on the calendar for the weekend, and that in itself made me want to do a little dance and just enjoy the freedom of a no-commitment summer weekend. Going with the flow was as great as I figured it would be! Lots of family time, pool time, and last-minute time with friends.

A few days ago I was chatting with one of my friends whose husband recently received verbal orders that they’ll be PCSing (moving) in a few months, and it’ll be their first official big military move. She was asking me for tips about a few things, and I quickly laughed and told her that I probably had no tips to offer because we usually just fly by the seat of our pants for these big moves.

As we continued chatting I realized that Jamie and I do unintentionally follow a system for the way we do things when it comes to these big moves that’s worked out pretty well for us so far! I’m not saying my tips are the very best ways to do things (in fact, I’m sure there are easier ways to do many of the things I’ll mention!), but this is just a system that works like a charm for our little family. Hopefully something I mention will make your next partial DITY move a little easier too.

We make it very clear up front who’s in charge of handling what. Jamie handles everything on the Army side (scheduling movers, packers, dealing with orders, etc.) while I handle house hunting,  mail forwarding, turning off our current utilities, and turning on the new ones. I know this isn’t always an option, but we find it much easier to go ahead and pick out a future home before the move instead of waiting until we arrive to town. We really like limiting our time in hotels, plus it makes setting up utilities so much easier.

When it comes to scheduling packers and movers, we like to do “backward mapping”. We pick what day we want to get on the road and work backwards from there. If we plan to hit the road on a Friday, we like the schedule the packers for Wednesday and the movers on Thursday. Again, we try our best to eliminate time in hotels and empty houses the very best we can, especially with a little one running around.

3. Plan your hotels & mealtime stops ahead of time

We also like to use the time before the packers arrive to map out our road trip route, book pet-friendly hotels, and scope out fun restaurants using TripAdvisor. Our last move could not have been along a more boring route (southern Arizona to Kansas), but we still made it a blast by finding cozy places to stay and the best local restaurants in town.

Jamie and I have referred to the night before our packers arrived for our first big move as one the worst night our of married lives (dramatic much?). We were so stressed! It was freaking unbelievable. We were totally ready to just pack like we were going on a weeklong vacation and send the rest of our junk with the movers, but we soon found out that setting aside the stuff you want to take with you is just not that easy, dummies! We now know better. 🙂

Great system: We use our pantry and our master bathroom as our loading zones and keep these areas off limits to the packers/movers. About a week before the packers arrive, we start setting things in those areas that we want to take with us instead of let the packers pack them up. We don’t like actually packing them too early because we still need things easily accessible while we’re living in the house (I hate living out of a packed suitcase or a box).

Things we always set aside to move ourselves:

 

A partial DITY move means that you’re moving some of your stuff yourself, and you’ll get paid for every pound you move. Make sure to weigh your cars completely empty and then again when they’re totally full so you can claim every pound difference. Hold on to those weigh tickets ($$$$)!

Once the movers arrive Jamie is our clipboard person. He tracks every single box and piece of furniture that goes out the door while I continue to pack up the stuff that’s going with us and eventually start loading it into my Jeep (Jamie packs up his truck later on). Jamie is also our clipboard person once the truck arrives at our next duty station. This job is so important and must be done carefully to avoid a headache.

Once our cars are entirely loaded down with our stuff we become cleaning machines and scrub the house to the condition it has to be in. When cleaning out the refrigerator we typically like to offer any food that’s in great condition to the neighbors we’re closest with. Things like butter, eggs, and cheese are always accepted by them! We also use our cleaning materials to scrub our next house while it’s empty before our boxes arrive.

As far as the road trip itself goes, pack a small bag of stuff you’ll need for those few days so you don’t have to unpack much of the car each day to get the things you need.

We only typically keep our weigh station tickets. The military gives you a set amount each day for lodging regardless of what hotel you stay at, and the same goes for gas. They’re going to give you a certain number of cents per mile regardless of what kind of car you drive and how much you spend on gas. Whether your car gets 15 mpg or 40 mpg, you’re going to get the same amount of money from the military.

For our most recent move we asked our movers to unpack our boxes, and we will continue to do that from here on out. They actually only ended up unpacking about half of them because we were ready for them leave (it was late), but what they did unpack for us was a huge help. Let me be clear though – by unpack, I mean carelessly dump the contents of your boxes everywhere. Though every room looked like a bomb went off, having everything out the boxes already made it so much easier and faster to get everything in its right place. Bonus: Any boxes that they unpack they will take with them!

10. Break down your boxes and give them away for free on Craigslist

One major issue all military members face with moving is what to do with those darn boxes and packing paper. Being buried under the boxes and paper tends to be really bothersome, so we developed a system for getting rid of them painlessly and quickly. As each box gets unpacked, we break it down and throw it in the garage. The only boxes we don’t break down are the garment boxes because we use those to house all the packing paper. As soon as we have a decent amount of boxes in the garage, I put a listing on Craigslist offering the boxes and paper for free. As soon as someone texts me with a time they’d like to pick them up, I give them our address and open the garage. All the boxes and paper are always gone within 24 hours with an average of three different people that come to get them. They’re always very thankful. We’ve done this three times and it works flawlessly!

For more PCS stories & tips, click here.