If there is something I never want to do again in my life, it would be moving houses. More specifically, it would be moving houses while pregnant. Granted I was “only” four months pregnant, but it was one of the most exhausting things I’ve ever done. Thankfully, my husband and I made a decision that saved my sanity and was worth every penny. Make sure you scroll down to read two tips we used to make this sanity saver even cheaper.

(If you’d like to read more about how I survived moving while pregnant, make sure you check out the ebook I wrote with 8 tips to survive moving while pregnant.)

Our Moving Story

(or why we did things the way we did)

So let me give you a little background our last move. When we found out I was expecting for the second time, we were living in a small townhouse with no yard space and an active dog and toddler. It wasn’t ideal then and it definitely would be hard with a baby added to the mix. So right away, we knew it was time to move.

After spending a month getting our townhouse ready to sell, we put it on the market and had an offer within a week. Now came the fun and stressful part: we had to find the house we would buy. We had a few offers fall through and then, we found it. Our dream home was waiting just for us.

Everything fell into place, but there was one catch: the only way we could set up the closings on both houses didn’t leave us many options for how to move. We had to be out of our townhouse by 10 am on a Friday, but we couldn’t get into our new house until around noon that same day. Our options for making it work were limited (especially by my pregnancy.)

The Choice that Saved My Sanity

We considered renting a moving truck, but we would have to rent it for almost 5 days in order to fill it up at one end and empty it out at the other. We would also need to get friends or family to help us out. The money it would take to rent a truck for five days plus coordinating people to help didn’t seem like the best choice.

Next, we thought about a pod. Here we ran into the same problem: we would need it for so long that it was no longer cost-effective. We would also need people to help as I couldn’t help much with the lifting.

Finally, we hit on the winning solution: hiring movers. Initially, we scoffed at the cost. It is expensive! Even though we didn’t have a ton of stuff, it would still cost a good chunk of change to hire a moving company to help us.

But after weighing all of our options, we decided that movers were definitely worth it. Not only did it fit with the odd time frame we needed to get things done within, but it would also allow us to get things done without having to try to wrangle together family and friends.

The Two Ways We Saved Money on Movers

After we hired the moving company, we still wanted to be as cost-effective as possible. We had to pay the moving company by the hour, so we came up with two ways to cut down on the time they were there and how much we had to pay.

1) Start from a centralized location

As we packed up boxes and found furniture that we didn’t need before we moved, we took everything down to the garage. Starting a week before the move, we parked our cars in the driveway and filled our garage with boxes. That way, when the movers came in the morning, the garage could be their main focus. They were able to move all of the big furniture into the truck first (unimpeded by boxes) and then they simply had to take the short trip back and forth from the garage to the truck many times.

We lived in a three level townhouse. It definitely shaved time off since they only had to walk from the first level garage instead of the second and third levels.

2) Make one room a dumping ground

Okay, maybe not a dumping ground, but designate a room you don’t really need right away as the storage room. As I was packing up, I did a pretty good job of organizing boxes and labeling them. But instead of trying to make sure every single box and item ended up exactly where I wanted it, I had the movers put most of them either in the garage or the “dumping ground.”

Some boxes had very obvious locations marked (kitchen, bathroom, one of the bedrooms, etc.) but others were more unclear. The movers would ask me where to put them and I told them to put everything else in the living room. Our new house had a living room and a family room, so I sacrificed one for a month or so to be the “box room.”

Again, instead of having the movers wandering around trying to make sure every single box got to a specific room, they were able to centralize where to put most of them.

Between these two strategies, we were able to shave an entire hour off of their estimated moving time. And time is money!

So when people ask if it was worth it to spend the money on a moving company, my answer is definitely yes! Spend the money and get the peace of mind.

Make sure you check out the ebook I wrote about moving while pregnant for 7 more tips to save your sanity.