Moving Experience Sharing SD to Irvine
This content was automatically generated by gpt-4o-mini (No human review). The original post is in Chinese.
After becoming an adult, I have moved several times, but none have been as challenging as this one. My first experience was moving from a dormitory to an off-campus rental, which basically involved taking some clothes and daily necessities, walking with a suitcase or using a bicycle or tricycle to haul a few things. Then there was the move from a rental in China to the United States, where we packed six suitcases. Initially, we stayed in a studio that came furnished. I had ordered essential household items and appliances from Amazon and IKEA, which arrived at the apartment office two days before we got to the U.S., so we could move in right away. The last move was from the studio to this central mesa 2b1b apartment where we have lived for nearly two years. The two places are about 100-200 meters apart, and we borrowed a cart from the apartment to make multiple trips. Since there was a 4-5 day overlap in the lease between the old and new places, we could move a few times each day, and the two of us managed it ourselves. We also bought a lot of second-hand furniture from outside: 4 tables, 2 beds, 2 mattresses, and 1 sofa, all of which we transported back home using our SUV and the apartment cart.
This time, the challenges are much greater because after two years of living here, we have accumulated a lot more furniture (like a TV, TV stand, coffee table, dishwasher, etc.) and many outdoor items. The bigger challenge is the distance; we are moving from San Diego to Irvine, which takes nearly 3 hours for a round trip by car. It’s not feasible to do this every day, and our own car can’t fit many large pieces of furniture, so we must rent a vehicle to move most of the furniture in one day.
Actually, my family hasn’t had this kind of experience. Thinking back to my childhood, our few moves were mostly within a driving distance of 10 to 40 minutes, and both houses were owned. This meant we could stretch the moving process over 10 days to half a month since there was no rent to pay on either side, allowing us to move slowly. Plus, we had many relatives who could help out. Moving within the same city is not comparable to moving between two cities.
Moving is an emotional experience. On one hand, you need to sort through your belongings, which forces you to reevaluate your life: you might have to sell furniture, let go of things, and throw away many unnecessary items. On the other hand, you are leaving a familiar place where you have lived for several years, filled with memories, reluctance, and a mix of anticipation and anxiety about the new home, needing to adapt to a new living environment. Additionally, moving is very time-consuming and exhausting. This time, we were busy for nearly two weeks; for one week, I woke up at 8 AM every day, with no time for a nap, no time to sit down, and no time to exercise. I spent the entire day packing and organizing until bedtime. I hope this blog can help lighten the burden of moving for everyone.
I want to share two moving videos I’ve watched before, which I highly recommend:
Negative example: Episode 57: How Much Did I Spend Moving in New York? The Water Can Get Deep!
Positive example: 10 MOVING TIPS AND HACKS to Save Money + Time | Moving Vlog USA
Preparation Before Moving
Determine the Moving Plan: When to Move? How to Move?
First, we decided on the moving date, which is mainly determined by the start date of the lease for the new home. For example, we can move into our new place on September 7, and the date to vacate the old place can be chosen flexibly, as long as we notify the school apartment 30 days in advance. Since September 7 is a Tuesday, we plan to move over the weekend, so we set the move-out date for the old place to be Saturday, September 11. This means we need to move everything out on September 11 and return the keys to the apartment office before midnight. September 11 is our Moving Day.
Next, we decided how to move. In the spirit of handling everything ourselves, we chose not to hire a moving company. We plan to rent a U-Haul and drive it ourselves. The U-Haul website does offer workers for hire, but the labor costs are quite high, so we plan to ask friends to help load and unload on moving day.
There is a few days overlap between the leases of the new and old places, which I think is a good thing. This gives us ample time to prepare; we can go to the new place in advance to check it out and move some items without having to do everything in one day. For example, the rent is $1200 a month, and the 4 overlapping days amount to an extra $160 in rent, which isn’t too much. So, on September 7, we loaded our small car with the items we had already packed and went to the new place to check it out. On one hand, it allowed us to familiarize ourselves with the driving route, pick up the keys for the new place early, and move some items, significantly reducing the burden on the final moving day. Additionally, checking in at the new apartment office might take about half an hour, and we were very glad we made the trip in advance.
September 7, 2021 Update: On the first trip of moving, I drove to a spot 500 meters from the new home in Irvine and hit two dips. I didn’t notice the road signs, going at 40 mph, and the bottom of the car hit the ground twice (once in the middle and once in the front), causing all the items in the car to bounce up… It was painful, and I’m not sure if anything got scratched. In the morning, while moving items, it was hot and sunny, so I quickly went home to change into a set of hiking clothes, which made me feel much cooler.
Packing Items
You can start packing two weeks before moving. First, sell any furniture that you rarely use, don’t need, or don’t want to take with you. September is just the right season for new students to move in, and due to the impact of the pandemic, many furniture items are out of stock, making second-hand goods particularly easy to sell this year. Next, start organizing and packing your items, beginning with daily necessities and clothes that you won’t need for the next half month. The tools needed for packing include lots of shipping boxes, a utility knife, clear tape, and a marker. You can buy these at the beginning, and if you run out, you can buy more later. Since we have a storage room, we’ve kept the shipping boxes we’ve received over the past year, so we didn’t need to buy any boxes. When packing, I number the boxes; for example, kitchen items start with the letter K, office supplies with O, and sports equipment with S, followed by a number. I write the number on the inside of the box and take a photo of the items inside along with the number. Then I pack the box and write the number and category of items on the outside. For instance, S1 for dumbbells, S2 for snorkeling gear, K1 for glassware, K2 for the dishwasher. In this way, we ended up packing 34 shipping boxes and created a Google Sheet to record all the box numbers and contents.
In addition to the boxes, we have six suitcases, and I put most of the clothes in the suitcases. We also have about ten shoeboxes left over from previous shoe purchases, which can be used to store shoes. Besides that, we have two monitors and one television. Buying special boxes for these electronics is expensive (a box at U-Haul costs $14+), so I wrapped the monitors in cheap cotton jackets and secured them with elastic bands. We also have two full-length mirrors, which we tied to a tabletop and wrapped with a yoga mat. As for large furniture, like the bed frame, desk, and bookshelf, we bought these second-hand, so they weren’t expensive and we didn’t mind moving them without original packaging. We bought a large plastic bag for the mattress. My expensive office chair still has its original shipping box.
In the end, our moving inventory includes:
Full-size bed, mattress, three tables, six folding chairs, sofa, TV stand, TV, two monitors, printer, shredder, desktop computer, fan, vacuum cleaner, microwave, dishwasher, rice cooker, air fryer, kettle, coffee table, nightstand, wardrobe, bookshelf, cabinet, shoe rack, office chair, three floor lamps, two full-length mirrors, kayak, lots of camping and hiking gear, many shoes, many clothes, many daily necessities, many office documents and books, many electronic devices, lots of food supplies, many gardening tools, and ten potted green plants.
9/8/2021 Update: I can’t remember how many days I’ve been packing… Today I’ve been packing from morning till night. Looking at my flowers and plants, a total of 14 pots, I’m wondering how to move them to the new house. The largest snake plant seems a bit sick; a few leaves have wilted. I diagnosed it yesterday and thought I might have forgotten to water it, so I gave it a lot of water, but it still looks sick today. What should I do?
9/9/2021 Update: Today I packed all day again. How tired am I? I’ve been at home without going out, and my watch shows I walked 7,500 steps… I walked 7,500 steps at home…
Car Rental
A few days before our move, we placed an order on the U-Haul website to rent a 10’ Truck. According to the U-Haul website, since our home has two bedrooms, we should have rented a 15’ Truck. However, we went to the U-Haul store in advance to check things out, bought some boxes, tape, markers, and other tools, and looked at the sizes of different trucks. At that time, we decided to rent the 10’ Truck because it is the smallest model. I had only driven an SUV before, and I wasn’t very confident about driving a truck, so a smaller truck would be easier to handle. Additionally, we measured the dimensions of the truck and felt that all our furniture would fit. Besides the truck, we also rented two dollies to make it easier to move furniture and boxes. Furthermore, we purchased insurance since it was my first time driving a truck, and having insurance made me feel more secure.
We chose to pick up the truck on 9/10 in San Diego and return it on 9/11 in Irvine. This meant picking up the truck the day before at 6 PM, allowing us to drive it home that evening and leaving some time for moving the next day. This choice proved to be very wise; we went to the U-Haul pickup location the afternoon before to get familiar with driving the truck (driving a truck is really hard). The return time is within 24 hours, and if we go over, we have to pay extra.
The truck we rented
The night before the move, we filled our small car with important items again, mainly important documents and electronic devices (large furniture was loaded into the truck). Our SUV was quite helpful during this move as well. The plan for tomorrow is for me to drive the truck while Cuihao drives our SUV, so each of us will be driving our own vehicle on the trip from San Diego to Irvine. This means we will both be driving independently, without a passenger to help with water, navigation adjustments, etc., which is quite challenging.
The night before the move, we were busy until after 1 AM and still hadn’t packed everything or finished cleaning.
Moving Day
Warm reminder: Wearing hiking clothes on moving day is very appropriate, and make sure to prepare for sun protection at the same level as outdoor hiking.
Loading the Truck
On the morning of moving day, we got up around 8 AM (which is quite late!! because we stayed up late the night before), and we continued to clean up, packing the last few items. We had arranged for two friends to help us move, and we called them over to our place at 10:30 to start loading. We first loaded the large furniture onto the truck, and I had prepared a lot of ropes to secure the furniture since the truck has crossbars at different heights. I basically directed the two guys while they moved things, and I stayed in the truck thinking about how to “pack everything as tightly as possible” to fit the furniture snugly, then secured it with ropes (for example, tying the table legs to the crossbars). Loading the truck took a lot of time; we originally hoped to leave by noon, but it ended up dragging on until around 1:30 PM before we filled the truck. In the end, we also had to take a few potted plants that we couldn’t take with us (they had grown too large) to a friend’s house or throw them away, and return the keys. By the time we actually drove off to Irvine, it was already 2 PM.
PS: We ordered pizza for takeout here in SD and had a haphazard lunch.
Loading photos; the strange black frame on the right was originally used to tie up the fragrant vine, but it couldn’t fit, so we didn’t move it.
Driving
Driving from San Diego to Irvine, from the old home to the new home, takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes without traffic. We probably drove for about an hour and a half. This journey was really exhausting; first of all, I hadn’t rested well for many days, and this morning I spent a lot of energy packing, cleaning, and moving things. Plus, driving a truck is quite stressful. One obvious experience of driving a truck is that the driver’s seat is very high, and the side mirrors can’t be adjusted while driving; they can only be manually adjusted outside when the vehicle is stopped. Also, when accelerating, it feels like the response is slow, and going uphill clearly makes it hard to gain speed. Our plan was for Cuihao to lead the way in an SUV while I followed him, but in the end, I lost track of him. There were a lot of cars on the road, and I don’t like to follow too closely, so I kept getting cut off by other vehicles. Later, there was traffic, and I changed lanes, so we ended up not being in the same lane and missed each other. In short, driving alone is really difficult; I don’t want to go through this experience again.
Unloading
Fortunately, after some ups and downs, we both arrived safely at the new home, and it was already past 4 PM, with more than an hour left to return the truck. We found two friends from Irvine to help us unload, and thankfully, unloading was much quicker than loading. Plus, our new home is on the first floor, making it easy to move things inside. We unloaded everything from the truck in less than an hour. We quickly went to refuel and return the truck, and we managed to return it just in time. After that, we had dinner and then went home to finish unloading the cargo from the SUV’s trunk.
What surprised me was that the cargo in the truck, despite all the bumps along the way, didn’t shift much at all; it was exactly in the same position as before we closed the truck door. Unloading and unpacking later confirmed this; we didn’t break a single glass item during the move, and a month later, we didn’t feel like we lost anything during the moving process.
Follow-up: Later, we checked the credit card statement and found that U-Haul charged us for being late, claiming we returned the truck late. But in reality, we returned it right on time. We contacted customer service online, sent them photos to prove we returned it on time, and eventually got that charge refunded. This shows the importance of checking credit card statements.
Efforts After Moving
Unpacking
That night after moving, I started unpacking, but I was just too tired. It wasn’t until the next evening that we managed to unpack most of the boxes. Then we went on a trip to Alaska. When we returned from Alaska, we realized there were still many areas in the new home that needed renovation, so I spent about another week tidying up and organizing the new place.
First, I unpacked all the boxes, keeping the ones that were in good condition and the right size for future moves, while throwing away the oversized and damaged ones (since there wasn’t enough space in the new home). Before tossing them, I printed out the Google Sheet I had previously recorded to check if all 34 boxes were accounted for and if anything was missing. Of course, everything was there.
Buying and Assembling Furniture
First of all, our new home is 20 square meters smaller than the old one, and there is significantly less storage space in the kitchen and living room. The urgent task was to buy some shelves for the kitchen and living room, as well as a bed, bedside table, and bookshelf.
Speaking of which, we originally had an IKEA bookshelf that cost $29.9, but worried it would be too big and difficult to move, we sold it for $20. After selling it, I regretted it because I remembered how long it took me to hammer in the nails when I bought that bookshelf years ago. Sure enough, when I bought a new bookshelf for the same price in the new home, it took me 2 hours to assemble it, twisting screws and hammering nails, which was very exhausting. So, moving can be a hassle; even if those pieces of furniture may not be worth much, selling them and buying new ones is fine, but you have to spend time shopping for new furniture. You might not like what you find, or the old model might be out of stock, and you’ll also spend a lot of time assembling it yourself. Therefore, I believe that as long as you still need something, you should definitely take it with you when moving, rather than selling or throwing it away, unless you can easily find a new one and don’t have to spend extra time on it.
Recently, due to the pandemic, many IKEA furniture items were out of stock, making it very difficult to find an affordable bed, and prices in the second-hand market were also high. So, we went to IKEA and bought a lot of new furniture, with many items having limited choices, so we just bought whatever was cheap and practical. In total, I spent about another week busy assembling a lot of furniture, hanging many items on the walls (like mirrors and shelves), which made my wrist hurt quite a bit, but I finally got the new home organized.
Photos of the new living room and balcony.
Moving Expenses Summary
This epic move cost around $1069 in total, including:
Packing supplies (boxes, tape, knife, markers): $15
U-Haul rental + dolly + insurance: $145
U-Haul gas: $54
New furniture purchases: $1231
Sale of second-hand furniture: $376
Excluding the cost of buying furniture, the moving process cost $214, which is quite cheap. However, I personally spent an entire week packing, and with the time Cuihao put in, it totaled about 10 days (calculated for one person). If the monthly salary is $6000 after tax, then the time cost is $2000. But if I hired a moving company, excluding the time I still need to spend, I could save about half the time (around $1000), which is 5 working days, but the cost of hiring a moving company could be $2000-3000. So, considering all this, I still feel that moving by myself is more cost-effective, and I will continue to move myself in the future.
Experience Summary
If I have any advice, it would be that when packing, I probably don’t need to be so meticulous and spend so much time. The quality of my packing is sufficient to ship items without damaging them. Additionally, in daily life, I should avoid buying too many things and think twice before making purchases. For items that I don’t use often or clothes that I don’t wear, I should consider selling, giving away, or throwing them out. Also, I want to reduce the frequency of moving; after all this hassle, I really don’t want to move again within a year. Ideally, I should stay in one place for at least two years before moving again.
Speaking of moving, I was quite sad afterward because I really liked the house and community I lived in before. But Cuihao didn’t seem as affected; he appeared indifferent. I later realized that the reason was that I had invested a lot of time and effort into improving my living environment, while he hadn’t. Just like now that I’ve moved to a new home, I’ve spent a lot of time considering where to add storage space and where to place furniture most appropriately. My old home also went through this process; I made many renovations that ultimately made the living environment very comfortable. This new place is indeed worse than where I lived before—there are fewer windows, the living room ceiling is lower, the stove and oven are older, the view from the room is worse, and the rooms are smaller. But gradually, I started making improvements and reasonable designs, and the final result wasn’t too bad. After living here for a month, I slowly got used to it, became clear about where to put things, became familiar with the community environment, and gradually felt a sense of security, starting to consider this place as home. This moving experience, along with my future need to rent a place for work, made me realize that I really hope to have my own home rather than just renting and moving every couple of years.
A home doesn’t need to be very large; it just needs to be well-designed to meet various needs: for example, the kitchen needs to accommodate cooking, with a large countertop, a powerful range hood, and a dishwasher; the living room needs to be spacious enough to fit two yoga mats for fitness and entertainment; the balcony needs space for plants, a kayak, and drying kayak gear; the bedroom/office needs enough space for two large desks for convenient work. It should be quiet, safe, and convenient for commuting. A house that meets these requirements doesn’t need to be a mansion or cost a lot of money. I believe housing is very important to me; it’s a fundamental personal need. Once this issue is resolved, I can focus more on other things. But it doesn’t need to be extravagant; meeting basic needs is sufficient, and I think the remaining money is better spent on travel rather than upgrading to a bigger house (which is really too much hassle and exhausting).
Easter Egg
I started packing furniture before moving, spending 2 days creating 3D models of both my old and new homes on the HOMESTYLER website and rendering images.
9/1/2021 Update: Today’s procrastination results. I felt anxious thinking about moving next week, so I started packing today. Things I won’t take will either be given away or sold. This led to the question of which furniture to take with me. So I made a design and drew all the furniture I want to take into the model according to their sizes. About 80% of the furniture in the picture is based on the dimensions of my current home. This website is amazing and it’s free. I plan to create a design of my current house as a keepsake. The apartment in the picture is a 2b1b with an actual area of 58 square meters.
New home model:
Old home model
Old home link: https://www.homestyler.com/projectDetail/61307b153c51700a6a4d4fb9
9/2/2021 Update: Photos taken on my phone over the past year have shown that the arrangement in my home has been changing. The model was created based on the most beautiful version I remember. My home is currently a mess, and I’ve already started selling furniture. Packed boxes are piling up on the living room floor. I can’t take nice photos anymore, and I have far fewer pictures on my phone than I thought. This has been the most satisfying house we’ve lived in so far, even though it’s quite old and not very big. It’s a pity that we have to move after living here for less than two years.
