Here are a few things we learned with our first move with the military.
1. Expect all your belongings to be ruined or missing (because you may never see them again). In our case, we lost a bunk bed set, mattresses, and $200 worth of tools, as well as other small misc. things.
2. Don't let the movers leave your house without having them put a sticker on EVERYTHING and have it inventoried on their paper work. (They "forgot" to bring mattress boxes for the two twin mattresses and told us they would put the numbers on and box them once they arrived back at the warehouse....never happened, now we're responsible for replacing them because they don't have record of them....I am so naive). $300 down the drain.
3. If anything breaks, keep it so they can replace it...even if that means keeping small shards of glass in a large box stored in your garage for two months until they can come inspect it. $100 down the drain.
4. Don't expect your belongings for a few months...pack accordingly so you're not wishing you had that one thing (in this case, all of Hazel's clothes I didn't pack because I thought we would receive our things in two weeks. Two months later our stuff came and by then Hazel didn't fit into any of her 6-9 month because she was almost 10 months old...what a waste of super cute clothes I should've packed in our suitcases.
5. Keep paint or other trimmings for anything that is an antique that you refinish. I have a small end table that is handmade and antique. Before I left, I refinished it and now can't find any matching paint for the huge scrape along the top.
6. Sell everything you're willing to get rid of. If you haven't used it in the past year...sell it or give it away....If you don't it will probably get ruined anyway.
7. If you want something done right....do it yourself. If you can hack it...move yourself...I personally can't hack it, so I complain about how other people did such a terrible job moving our things instead.
That's all I can think of now......Enjoy your next move!
