It’s been nearly two weeks to the day since our big move. It was every bit as horrid as you think it would have been. The thing with staying home with your child and doing a bit of freelancing, is you have no stamina for boring crap anymore. You may think staying at home with a small child is nothing but boring crap, but actually it’s more like random chaos programmed by someone trying to appeal to teenagers, because nothing lasts more than 10 minutes. Punctuated by shots of adrenaline when your little person disappears around a corner in the grocery store, or nearly falls off a slide backwards, or makes strange gurgling sounds from another room. So boring isn’t really the word for it.
Needing to stay focused for an entire day on packing every piece of kitchen kit I own is boring, and I was like a three year old myself. Wandering off, wanting a snack, wanting a drink.
Normally, packing is preceded by you convincing yourself you just need to collect old produce boxes from behind a shop, photocopier paper boxes from work, or wine boxes from the liquor store. Three days before you actually move, the panic sets in and you buy a carload of boxes from a self-storage place. The night before the truck comes sees you buying massively overpriced packing tape from a gas station at 11pm.
To skip this whole experience, I booked Frogboxes. These are reusable packing crates that are delivered to your door, and then picked up from your new place. The crate themselves are about twice as big as your average packing box, flap shut and require no tape. We stacked them securely five high. The lovely delivery man arrived with a role of labels for the boxes and the instructions to NEVER DRAG THEM ACROSS THE FLOOR. They tear any flooring to bits apparently.
I followed the Frogbox website’s advice and went with 35 crates. If we were two adults in a two bedroom, then yes, I think it would have been fine. Add a child into the mix, and all their toys, clothes that they’ve grown out of, clothes that are that bit too big, craft supplies and assorted bits, and you need an extra ten crates I’d say. We ended up buying some boxes from a storage place a few days before our move.
The pressure to unload your Frogboxes before pick-up is a blessing and a curse. I’m sitting here with ten boxes still to unpack, but they are all of our cardboard ones. The Frogboxes were picked up a week ago. You’re also not faced with a mountain of cardboard to recycle after the move, either. If you’re really not ready, you can extend your rental for a nominal fee for another week. We scrambled to empty those last five crates just to get the stacks out of our apartment.
In total, our Frogboxes cost us just over $200 for a two week rental. When we bought new boxes, they came to nearly $80. I reckon we would have come close to $200 had we bought all our boxes new, as well as had to deal with the hassle of recycling them afterwards. And the tape. There’s never enough tape. I think I like the Frogboxes the best for freeing me from the difficulty of packing tape.
Just read your blog and I am trying to figure it out as well. But for our move ( 3 bedroom) plus garage and basement (kids…) we would need Frogboxes 4 bedroom package need at least 2-3 weeks total time plus packing materials for the breakables, that would come to a total of $405….WOW just for my packing supplies, that is ridiculous. But new boxes are the same cost approx maybe a bit less. The other option I am considering is http://www.CheapBox.ca they have a large house package 100 boxes delivered for $200 (tax incl) and this gives me more space than the frogboxes. Yes I have to deal with tape, and recycling the boxes after but for $200 savings that will be worth it! Plus I can sell the boxes after or donate to charity ( food banks will take them or Salvation army perhaps?). Plus the boxes are 100% recycled and by passing them on I think I will feel good about that.
Base on your move cheapbox.ca would of been about $ 125 all in for you ( compared to $280) and you could of also donated after you were done.
I am just blow away by this plastic box rental business that has just sprung up as a green business ( due to Dragons Den). Doesn’t it take alot of oil to make plastic, and the plastic crates are made where –china of course, so they need to be shipped here and they don’t fold down to make that easier. And then the price they are charging…wow it just goes with this over priced society we are all living in , because our houses are worth so much that we can afford crazy stuff and pay for overpriced green washed products. But I am one not to speak, I just had my second coffee of the day in a paper cup that was “ethical” coffee ( well at least my first one was at home in a regular mug…but argh made with a kurig k-cup—– another overpriced useless product we have today that we don’t need, but since they make our lives “easier” we have them….
Sorry for the rant / rave .
JW
PS: also to consider is that Frogbox donates 1% of its gross revenue to frogs. So for my move that would be a whole $4. But by using the others I will save $200, and can donate the boxes ( worth more than $4 for sure) and also donate some cash that I saved.
That makes me feel better about my k-cup life in the city…….
It’s true, things like frog box are pricey when you’re moving a whole house. We just found getting rid of the boxes after moving a real chore, as often the recycling dumpsters would be full right after a moving weekend. And as someone pointed out to me recently, recycling things costs energy, so whenever possible reusable is better.
But you’re right, these things are plastic, and where were they made? If you can donate the boxes to a charity that could use them a few more times, or pass them on to someone else who needs to move (which is what we did with the extra boxes we had to buy at the last minute), then that offsets the recycling a bit.
All that being said, had we been moving a larger place than a 2 bedroom, I’m not sure we could have afforded frog box either. Good on you for researching what to do with the cardboard boxes afterwards to extend their life – we do what we can right?