What’s Best for a Move: Hiring a Moving Company, Calling on Your Friends, or Renting a Mobile Storage Container?

When it comes time to move homes or renovate your house, determining the best course of action for removing your belongings from your home is of course paramount to your success. Two obvious solutions here are to either hire a moving company or call on the aid of friends on the day of the move. A third, less obvious option, is to rent a mobile storage container.

So, what’s best for you? We discuss the options and provide advice for determining what’s best for a move: hiring a moving company, calling on your friends, or renting a mobile storage container.

Hiring a moving company

Moving or renovating your home is a huge task, involving a lot of stress. When you hire a moving company, you certainly alleviate a lot of it.

Hiring a reliable moving company with a good track record (do your homework!) will allow you to avoid all (or at least most) of the physical labour required to empty your home of your belongings. Knowing the moving company is responsible, by understanding their insurance policy (and ensuring they have one!), for your belongings is also a great alleviator of the stress involved with moving.

As we should suspect though, moving companies are not cheap, especially the reliable ones – and it can take some work to uncover the right moving company for your move. If it is within your budget though, then it is worth finding the right moving company for your move.

Calling on your friends

Thank goodness for friends! Friends are the exact sort of people you can trust and rely on, and they don’t charge an arm and a leg for their help (usually pizza, constant snacks and water, and maybe a beer afterwards will do the trick).

Of course, there’s a different sort of risk with calling on your friends for moving houses. While they can be trusted and are reliable, they aren’t experts who do this every day, and they certainly aren’t insured. Indeed, if one of your friends damages one of your items, you’re highly unlikely to try to hold them accountable, given the favour they were doing you in the first place.

The stress of moving comes back when you call on your friends for help with it.

It also means that you need to lead the charge of the move – you’re certainly not going to be avoiding the physically laborious aspect of moving. And while your friends will come at the cost of only a lunch and dinner, you will still be required to deal with renting a truck.

Mobile storage containers

Hiring a moving company is safe and stress-free, but is also quite expensive. Calling on one’s friends will save you money, but it certainly doesn’t save you of the stress and physical labour involved with moving homes. Renting a mobile storage container for your move provides an economical option that comes with a huge decrease in stress and an increase in comfort.

It’s the often overlooked secret of moving, but it’s likely to be the best option for you. 

Moving at your own pace

Perhaps the greatest thing about a mobile storage container is that you can order the container in advance of your move date – weeks in advance if you would like. This provides the clear advantage of allowing you to load your belongings in advance.

As you know, there are many items in your house that can be packed weeks in advance of your moving date. Emptying cupboards and closets of various seasonal, storage, or infrequently-used items in advance of the day is necessary, but it also clogs your living space with boxes once it is packed. And you are still living there.

If you could take those out of the house once they were packed, then by the time moving day arrived, you will have most of the house empty. In fact, not only will much of the move already be accomplished, but you will also have accomplished it over time, at your own pace.

This is one great thing a mobile storage container provides: it allows you to complete your move at the comfort of your own pace. And that means at your own pace unloading at your new home as well.

Limit the physical labour

If you’re able to pack a few boxes and load them into your mobile storage container every day ahead of your move, then you will also avoid much of the arduous physical labour involved with moving.

At your own pace means you avoid the day you would have if you rented a truck and called on your friends. That day consists of needing to load your entire home into the truck and then unloading it all at your new home. In one day.

You can rent the truck an extra day if you need, but will your friends be available on the second day?

It’s a busy day (or two) with a lot of lifting no matter how you divide it up.

A mobile storage container avoids the majority of this. Perhaps you require friends to lift some of your largest and heaviest belongings on the day of the move, but giving those to one day, and leaving the rest to many other days is certainly a dramatically positive transformation of your move.

Time in between and renovations

There are some moves where ownership of your new home comes later than the date you vacate your old home. These circumstances are similar to families going through a renovation where the move involves an additional step of needing to keep your belongings in storage.

The convenience and flexibility of mobile storage provides all the answers we’ve learned above, but when there is time between ownership or you are renovating, mobile storage provides an additional one. If your moving company or friends are needed to move you out of your old home and into storage, then what about when you need to move out of storage and into your new home? Won’t you need them again?

A mobile storage container means the move is quite literally cut in half, since the truck your belongings needs to be loaded onto is at the same time your storage unit already.

What’s best?

Best is always determined by your situation. If you can afford the cost of professional movers, then this is probably the best solution for your move.

On the other hand, if you are working within a budget, then a mobile storage container can provide comfort and ease, security and efficiency at a much-reduced cost than hiring professional movers. With many days to move, you won’t have any one particular day of moving that leads to many more days that will hurt you to move.

With the strongest and most durable mobile containers in the Eastern Ontario market that come in a number of sizes, Box Me Up is your number one source for mobile storage. Learn more about Box Me Up mobile storage containers here, or book your container today!