From Austin, TX to Boston, MA I’m documenting and trying to make a learning experience for others. As my two cats, Huxley and Taloula crate train for the 20th day in a row, my partner and I just realized the reservation for the U-Haul Pods we SWORE we booked weeks ago is actually nowhere to be found. We’ve got insight to share and I’m excited for it.
I consider myself to be something of a pro mover at this point, I’ve packed up my life so many times, sometimes in nothing but trash bags and a duffel – but of the 30+ moves I’ve done in my lifetime, only a handful were halfway across the country and this would be my first move that didn’t involve my Stepdad and a massive truck hauling
Here’s some things we’ve run into, the steps we’ve taken to be more organized and how we prioritized our packing.
2 Months Out
In Austin AND Boston it seems most places require a 60-day notice. With that, it’s at the 2 month mark that you’ll start seeing apartments coming on the market. More and more as time goes on, so I could’ve waited to see if other things came on the market. I’m pretty type B, BUT when it comes to moving that far, I’m not leaving anything up to the last second so you can bet your tushy I was on every website at that 60 day mark just HUNTING for our new home. My partner and I had determined what our nonnegotiable apartment needs were ahead of time so I had the parameters and just kept a look out.
Step 1 was to establish our parameters – needs vs. wants and price range. We each came with ours and then found compromise on the lists. For us our price range was sub 3000 (yes, I know, but it’s just what it is when one of you works from home).
- Needs: (nonnegotiable, deal breakers if it doesn’t have these)
- in unit washer and dryer
- close to public transit (no more than a 10-15 minute walk)
- pet friendly
- hardwood floors (in the main living areas)
- parking
- dishwasher
- 2nd bedroom or den for an office
- Wants:
- newer appliances
- open kitchen/living area
- closet space
- neighborhood restaurants/bars we could become regulars at
- close to grocery
Step 2 was to start the process of reaching out to seemingly tens if not a hundred apartments. Plenty were duds, clear scams asking for banking information as a guise for being necessary for the application – but quite a few were gorgeous. Unfortunately we are bougie bitches…well idk if wanting an in-unit laundry with no carpet is bougie or just sanitary/efficient but either way – we had to have it.
A dilemma we ran into is so many apartments require four payments up front, all individually equal to one month rent. First Month, Last Month, Security, AND a brokers fee – costing anywhere from 10k -12k needed on move in for our budget. I don’t know about y’all but I’ve been in the service industry the last 4 years and only in the last couple of years have I been a Manager on a salary. That kind of money wasn’t going to come from just anywhere and I’d need so much more time to save. This hurt my heart since it meant sacrificing the classic homey feel that Boston apartments are so known for. With that, we decided to move back to the East Coast because we miss our families and friends – not for an aesthetic, still it is something to keep in mind, it’s a cute freaking aesthetic. You can find places that don’t require all four payments but I’d make sure you’re taking extra time to verify the validity of the rental, since I’m a skeptic and am always looking for the catch if something is going against industry standard. We went with a complex since it was only 1 month and a security deposit, again, we verified that it wasn’t sketchy and it worked for us!
Another Step 2 dilemma was that folks weren’t always too keen on Virtual Tours. ‘Why would you do virtual tours when you could just fly to Boston?’ Babes, it’s expensive to fly and I’d rather take some extra time off once we move over flying just to view apartments. Virtual tours save lives, but they’re evidently not as popular in Boston as they are in other places. With that – it all ended up working out, you just gotta be patient. We DID find a fantastic spot that was only a little out of our price range, but it met all of our needs and most of our wants.
This leads us to Step 3, signing for an apartment and deciding how to travel. Ideally we would’ve found the apartment first THEN decided how to travel, but we’d gone back and forth for a while on whether we wanted to drive, fly, train, ourselves and our belongings.
6 Weeks Out
At the end of the day it came down to the comfort of our cats Huxley, and Taloula. Driving wouldn’t be ideal since we’d have to take so many stops (I also have the silliest phobia of driving so not super helpful), plus if we were going to drive we’d want to make a trip out of it that isn’t conducive to having pets along for the ride. It would be prolonged confinement for the cats over DAYS instead of hours. Flying, we’d at least be able to focus on them entirely once boarded. The flight itself was scheduled to be 3 hours and 45 minutes, taking into account getting to the airport 2 hours early for boarding AND 2 hours before we could check into a hotel once we landed – we were looking at 8 hours for the cats at maximum being in their carriers.
From here we set up a shared folder in Notes that covered to-dos, packing lists, utility information, anything needing replaced when we move in. This is how we set it up.
I used ChatGPT to help me game plan a packing list, since we’d be shipping everything – we needed to make sure we could make it through a week without a majority of our belongings. I wouldn’t want to pretend like I’m great at keeping up with the latest evil in the great United States of Capitalism, so I didn’t know just how much water is wasted to upkeep the computers that generate AI – and I’ll be honest that I haven’t done the research to understand exactly why it’s bad – but I’m trying to minimize my usage now. This in tandem with watching tons of videos, and reading blogs on traveling cross country we got quite the dose of reality for the task we were taking on.
Step 4, we started harness training the cats and carrier training, incrementally increasing the times they spent in both every day (currently we’re up to 2 hours and 20 minutes). I went into declutter mode – my rule is if you haven’t thought about it for 3-6 months and it’s not a seasonal item, get rid of it. I found myself working my way from our closet out to the rest of the apartment.
1 Month Out
Decluttering is happening, things have been purchased, more and more items are packed.
We wanted a mixture of regular boxes and reusable totes so that when we get into the new home, we can have somewhere to put anything we don’t have space for since living in an apartment, there isn’t always a spot for everything. We found these 27 gallon totes in Home Depot, but I think any home improvement store, amazon, etc. would have something similar. We started off with 5 and purchased 5 more once it became clear we’d need more than we thought.
Below is the packing list I did for just myself and the kitties, my partner handled his own and we have a mutual list for the third checked back that will have essential living/sleeping items until our things arrive. We’re scheduled to be without them for up to a week after move-in so it’s been a selective process.
Two Weeks Out…Present day
Ok this being my first blog post it probably needs quite a bit of cleaning up and better explanation BUT this is where we’re at! We ship everything in 9 days, we fly out in 15. At this point we’re packing away everything and have been trying to do pantry & freezer clean-outs so we’re not wasting as much food when we leave. More to come!
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