I am back! 3 years later!
I feel awful about not finishing this series. But life happened and boy did it. But I at least wanted to come back and finish out these blogs for people who are PCSing and looking for some advice. I will continue with my TMO experience.
So household goods day arrived and the movers showed up early in the morning. Probably one of the biggest questions I had was do I have to feed them? And what do I get for them? To be honest, I feel like this was a bit of a fail for us. I decided to have water bottles in the fridge and I bought a box of donuts and let them know they could help themselves to them. I figured since it was breakfast time they could enjoy those and then we would see once lunch time came.
The movers were a crew of about 4 people with one being the person in charge of writing everything down. They got right to work, with each person taking on a different room. Boxes and lots of paper!! They wrap everything up in sheets of brown paper and just toss that into boxes. No bubble wrap. It made me nervous at first but I guess thats how it's done. I had left the boxes for my plate settings out with the intention of having them put them in there but they let me know that they wouldn't do that. They said it would take too much time for them to figure it out and they assured me my plates would be safe wrapped up in paper. They also let me know that I could wrap them myself if I really wanted to. I quickly realized that I couldn't put the plates in fast enough while they were packing and that I was just getting in the way at this point. Their solution was to wrap up my plates and put my empty boxes in a box so I could take them with me lol. I knew for next time that I should've just put my plates away in their corresponding boxes before they showed up.
One of the things I was told before the movers came was they they didn't want you wrapping things yourself. This is the reason I didn't put things away in boxes beforehand. But from my experience, they don't really mind. They just put whatever you wrapped in a box. So that was something to consider for my next move. One thing to keep in mind is that if you do wrap things yourself, they can't guarantee that it won't break. It would become your responsibility at that point.
So they continued to wrap things up and throw them in boxes. Their lead person would walk around and write everything down that was going in each box in a sheet of paper. And those pesky stickers!! You will learn about those stickers. I swear I still find them round. So, everything they wrap gets a sticker with a number. That number gets written down in the sheet of paper with a description of the item. Thats how they keep track of all your belongings. For your electronics, they write down the serial number next to them.
They continued to pack things up and this is where people say it is a good idea to keep an eye on them. We tried. We would walk around and just watch things get packed but it gets old after a while. It also feels weird just staring at them while they are trying to work. But this is up to your personality. Some people really like to make sure that things are getting done properly and belongings don't go missing. But the process was really straight forward. wrap things up, put them in boxes, record them on the sheet, close the boxes up and move on.
For furniture, they would take most things apart and wrap up the pieces in paper and tape. It is a good idea to have ziplock bags and let them know you would like all the screws and pieces in there. I took it a step further and used masking tape on the inside of the ziplock bag and label what those parts were for. I didn't do this for all our furniture. I mostly did it for our curtain rods. But if you don't have anything available, they wrap the screws up in paper, tape it up and write with sharpie what it belongs to. That works too. They have a special box called a "parts box" and thats where they throw all those things in so they are easy to find once you receive your stuff.
A funny story that still sticks with me until this day is about our mattress. I should preface this by saying that a couple of days before the movers show up, someone from the company comes out to your house to kinda take inventory of your stuff. They want to make sure they have the right packing materials and know what to expect. They had asked us if our mattress was a special kind, like memory foam. We were not sure about the answer. It was a cheap mattress from Ikea but I wasn't even sure it was memory foam although I didn't think it was a spring mattress. So we said no. Well, when the movers were wrapping it up, they were worried it was memory foam. This meant they would have to store it laying down as opposed to upright. I guess they were not prepared to do that. So they were going back and forth until one of the movers said they would just put it upright followed by him saying "It will be aight." To this day, I still remember him saying that. And I remembered it while my mattress was being unpacked in Okinawa. I said, "our mattress better be aight." We are super laid back so we didn't make a big fuzz about it. And our mattress did end up being "aight."
So lunch time came around and I noticed they never ate the donuts I had laid out. At this point most of the stuff was packed up and they were all taking a smoke break outside. So I wasn't sure if I should be providing lunch, since "breakfast" wasn't eaten. My husband went out there and asked them if they wanted lunch and they said they would probably just go home early and grabbed lunch on their way out. At this point, they all kinda came back in and ate our donuts lol. So they left all our boxes packed up inside and said they would be back the next day to load it in the truck.
Next day was easy. Only a few of them showed up and they basically loaded everything up into the moving truck. It took a lot less time than the day before and we didn't worry about food for that day. So that was it. We waived our things goodbye and sat in an empty house. Nothing too crazy about our experience except us stressing about food. I would say for next time, I would go ahead and have lunch ready for them during that first day. I think most people do that and that is what makes the most sense. We just had a weird vibe from our people. And that is another thing. Most of the time, these are local companies that are contracted out. So you don't really know what you are gonna get.
Another issue to touch on is tipping. Some people do, some people don't. We didn't. PCSing is expensive. No matter how much the military covers for it, there are always expenses that come up when you are moving. It was not in our budget to have extra money to tip the movers. So that is up to you how you wanna handle that. It is definitely not required but I'm sure it is appreciated. Especially if your crew went above and beyond for you.
So that is it. That was our experience with the movers and our household goods packing.
Thanks for reading!
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