I’ve been a full time driver/mover/furniture tech since 2012. If you’re moving across country, sell as much as you can. People pay so much money to move useless stuff it’s crazy.

-Don’t pack books into non-book boxes. For the love of god

-The easiest way to break glass is to lay it flat. Keep it stood up. Its more structurally sound. That goes doubly so for inside boxes. Think of a wine glass. People do handstands on wine glasses, but if you lay it flat it’ll just snap.

-Check your shelves on your furniture. Make sure that if they are loose, take them out.

-The backs on any (most) reclining chairs/sofas come off. Save yourself some headache.

-If you are moving your own couch, have fun. Always my favorite thing to watch non movers do. There is a whole wikipedia page for moving couches.

-When taking apart your bed start with the center slats. Everyone always seems to start with the side rails that run head to foot and end up breaking the center supports. Depending on the frame, usually, the slats are very cheap and break easily. Don’t put stress on them

-If it’s from IKEA, it’s NOT made to bounce around in the back of a truck. It will die on the way no matter how slow or careful you are.

-Those orange lift straps and harness straps are dumb. Use them only on mattresses, or when moving on flat ground. You’ll hurt someone when you hit an incline like stairs.

-Take a moving pad, fold it hotdog, lay it on the ground, tip your dressers on their side on top on one end of the pad, pull the other end while someone is on the backside of the dresser pushing. Save your back and your wall.

-Speaking of, clothes are fine to leave in drawers, but your loose stuff with move and fall behind the drawers inside the dresser/nightstand/upright whatever whenever you tip it on it’s side.

-If you’re loading your own truck, god speed. Tiered loads are better, don’t do whatever uhaul tells you to do, it’s dumb. Think perpendicular not parallel. Load mattresses stood up tight to the load, if it’s a nice mattress you could shift the top layers and you’ll need to fix it or it will deform over the years. Couches stand up, put a moving pad down and stand it up feet to the wall back to the load. Have straps.

If paying for movers understand that most of job time that it takes to do the move, which you would most likely pay hourly for, is boxes and loose bags and junk. All those little trips in and out are costly as all hell. Do that yourself. If you are renting a truck and you get to the unload location on say as an example June 22nd, book the truck until the 23rd or 24th and give yourself time to do stuff. That extra couple bucks will save you a lot of sanity.

Two Men and a Truck is not a reputable company just because it’s Two Men and a Truck. It’s a franchise. Might as well be a local buisness with how hands off the company is. Most every TMaaT locations I’ve seen are run by idiots that think moving is braindead and hire labor ready workers. Not to hate on labor ready, but most of the dudes that come to work are sneaking around taking those little one shot alcohol bottles in your bathroom when no ones looking and will damage some shit.

Uhaul has a service for hiring movers. The movers on there are generally more spendy, but it’s usually a better bet and more reliable than Craigslist.

-Also, if you hire movers do not say “Must not need to go the gym after this”. My god.

I could go on for days but i gotta go to bed lol