To start off our tree change journey,  we had to move first.

There are a few different ways to move:

Hire a small truck, or trailer,  or pay a lot of money for someone else to do it. You can also curl up in a ball go to the corner of the room and don’t move because the thought of packing, moving and unpacking,  makes your hair go grey prematurely!

I’m here to offer an alternative,  dont get to excited,  I’m not coming to your house to help you,  I want to offer advice from my experience.

We decided to look further into some options. We were moving, and needed to store our precious possessions for 3 months.  Storage facilities are good option,  but that would mean moving twice, I like my brown hair too much, to risk the greys coming on! And storage costs about $100 a week!  

So I looked into the shipping container options. You can hire a shipping container, they come to your house, drop off the container,  you fill it over time or go hard out and fill it asap.  Then they come back, pick up the full container and store it at “an unspecified location”  when I asked where the location was,  they are not obliged to tell you.  Hmm ok,  I have worked hard to buy this crap,  sorry I mean precious possessions,  I would like to know where my crap will be! That option is out for us then.

Did you know you can buy a decommissioned 20ft shipping container for $2000, and $200 to have it freshly painted!?!. If you live reasonably close to a major city,  look at the port websites,  lots of different companies sell off damaged ones. You need to arrange your own transport,  ring around to get the best price.  Some of the shipping companies have transport operators,  so it’s always worth asking. 

So we bought an old refrigerated shipping container,  it was fully insulated,  the fridge component no long worked,  and the corner was dinted.  But hey, I wasn’t planning to store my milk or anything.  Well we love it,  had it painted camouflage colour,  they delivered it to the front of our suburban home,  (I warned the neighbours, if you like me, loved your neighbours give them the heads up,  it is an eye saw!)

We arranged a working bee with our wonderful friends. They helped move all the already packed boxes and furniture into the container, floor to ceiling,  you need to tetra the hell out of your crap, to make use of the space wisely,  the tighter you pack the better,  no use leaving any space or the whole contents will move when in transit. The movement of the container is unforgiving 30-45 degree angle, sorry I better mention we used a tilt tray truck. Because of our ability to use all the space all our precious possession performed perfectly,  no breakages.  You can get a truck with a crane,  but it is more expensive.  If you haven’t completely filled the container, definitely use the crane transport option.

 

So by now we went on a 3 month road trip along the North East QLD Coast,  up to Cooktown with our Jayco camper and little man. We have settled into our home in NSW, where we were fortunate enough to have our shipping container sitting for 3 months,  open it up and it’s all fresh as a daily.  After moving the important items out,  we now use it as a storage shed,  my clever husband has made a concrete slab next to it,  and built a carport/ man shed/wife escape off the side.  So we now have an extra storage area for the crap,  oops I keep saying that, I mean less precious possessions that I want to keep,  but not actually look at!

Tell me your moving secrets,  hopefully you don’t have to do it for a while, but hey if you do I’d like to hear about it….