My daughter will be moving back in with us briefly until she can find a job and apartment later this summer. It will be a 12 hour drive back here from where she lives now and it means an overnight because we'll all have our own cars/truck to drive and there is no way I can do that in one day!
What tips do you have for packing things besides putting them in boxes that are too bulky to fit in cars?
What things besides change of address and stop utilities will she need to remember?
Any other advice will be a big help!
Depending on just how much she has, maybe rent a U-Haul?
Figure what things she's not going to need during her time with you and put them in their own clearly marked boxes. It means you can just dump all those boxes in the attic/basement/whatever rather than having to unpack absolutely everything right away.
It's remarkable how much you can fit into a box if you're willing to pack efficiently. My natural tendency would be to pack fragile things sparsely and put a lot of packaging material in there. I've seen professionals do it and was amazed at just how much they put into the box - still well padded but stuffed to the point nothing was going to move. Just remember to put that box on the top.
You've got the change of address - make sure everything is covered and set up mail forwarding if that's an option in her area. There's always something you miss. Last time I moved I forgot one of my pension plans - it's a small one that was set up so many years ago I had literally forgotten I had it. It's so small there's a chance it will be worth literally nothing by the time I retire, it's too small to make it worth transferring into one of my other plans, but the annual statement still has my personal details on it.
Make sure you take final readings of all the meters and take photographs to prove them. If there's a dispute later the pictures could be useful and will only take a few seconds to secure.
Depending on what your cars are, remember that loading the back heavily may change the handling. If you put a lot of weight in the back of a vehicle with front wheel drive you can lose some traction when trying to accelerate, and a lot of weight in the back relative to the car will affect cornering, stopping distances etc. It's easy to get into the mindset of throwing a few things loose on the top once it's loaded but if you do have to stop suddenly (or, worse, run into the back of something) those loose things might hit you in the back of the head.
Don't forget to give the keys back to the landlord!
