The next move is on the agenda, no matter if you are moving for the first time or if you have already moved a few times, each time you face new challenges. There are a few organizational basics that will help you organize your move quickly and easily. In the direct price comparison to removal enterprises the removal is worthwhile in self direction, thereby cash money can be saved. This is how you organize your move, our Guideline.
Organize helper
First, the big question is, can you do everything on your own when you move? Whether sofa or wardrobe, for many pieces of furniture you need a helping hand when moving. Usually not just one helping hand, but many helping hands!
- Friends
- family
- Colleagues
- Removal helper
Friends and family help gladly and for free
The closest to you, of course, are your family and friends. That’s why it’s especially worthwhile to address friends and family on the first train, they are happy to help and of course free of charge. When speaking to them, you can consider a few tips, put the shared experience in the foreground! Finally you will spend a day together, maybe you will also provide some potato salad and some warm sausages and a cool box of beer in the evening. Friends can already be convinced quickly! In the first sentence, avoid serious problems or other challenges that you will face on the day of your move. Emphasize that you will have a lot of fun and that of course you have taken care of everything, culinary and of course drinks!
And don’t forget, a smile can move a lot of things. Before you start your question, before you say the first word, put on a warm smile so you can spray some positive energy right at the beginning. Friends as well as family will already explain themselves faster and more uncomplicated to help with the move.
Convincing colleagues
If you don’t have a family locally or are completely new in a city or country, you can’t always fall back on your family and friends. Therefore it always helps to have a good relationship with your new and old colleagues. Because while you usually spend only a few days a month with your family, you usually have your colleagues around you every day. So the way is very cool! That’s why you should have colleagues on your list of helpers, especially those you get along with better.
Removal assistant
Removal helpers are not free of charge! With a moving company, whether personnel service provider or logistics provider, you always pay according to time. This means that the work of the removal company or the staff is charged hour by hour. How long they need and the more people there are, the more expensive it will be. But moving companies also have a few advantages.
Benefits of moving companies
- Professional packaging of furniture
- Expertise in logistics and transport
- no effort and stress for you as a tenant or buyer
- You can move in immediately
Disadvantages of moving companies
- Billing by hour
- Costs for organization and truck additional
Of course, many removal companies also offer the service of building everything up directly. From your own Smart TV and the wiring with the sound system to all the furniture, this saves a lot of stress when moving!
How much does a moving company cost?
The costs for removal companies vary from city to city, of course. In the metropolises like Munich and Berlin, where living space is scarce anyway, the services around the move are of course also very much in demand. Nevertheless, appointments with freight forwarders and removal companies can usually be made relatively quickly. Roughly speaking, you can expect the following costs when you book a moving company.
At Movinga we have found a nice overview of how much you have to charge for your move. These are the average costs of moving with a professional moving company. The long distance relocation is based on a move over 600 km (e.g. from Berlin to Munich). Source: Movinga.
Local move in the city
- ~ 35 m² 500 to 1050 €
- ~ 60 m² 700 to 1200 €
- ~ 85 m² 1050 to 1450 €
- > 120 m² 1200 to 2000 €
Longitudinal transfer
Local move Long-distance move*
- ~ 35 m² 1100 to 1800 €
- ~ 60 m² 1500 to 2400 €
- ~ 85 m² 2000 to 3000 €
- > 120 m² 2600 to 3600 €
Move date? Give us notice early enough
No matter whether you have friends, your own family, new and old work colleagues or even removal helpers at your side, don’t forget to let us know the date two days in advance.
In order to find as many helpers as possible, you should announce a move two to three weeks in advance. After all, it’s usually a whole day that you have to take your time to complete the move.
Unclean gently
What saves you the most work when moving? The fewer cartons there are to pack, the less you have to carry! Accordingly, you also have to unpack less and, of course, tidy up. Every single object therefore brings a certain unit of time with it. The less objects we take with us, the better!
So remember to simply clean out the trash when you move next time. Items that you have not used for more than a year will probably not be used again next year. So it’s worth thinking about whether you really still need this item. Especially in the cellar or in cupboards there are a few shopkeepers, clothes, flower pots – in life a lot accumulates! So our second tip is, think about how long you haven’t used certain items and ask yourself the logical question, will you ever use them again?
Buy cheap moving boxes
While we are already on the subject of the amount of items collected, of course you also save on the moving box. While one gets in the bigger supermarket around the corner single boxes for 3.99 € or in the DIY store for 2.99 €, one can buy bigger stacks of moving boxes in the Internet very cheaply in the set.
For example, you will find many offers on Amazon. Here one saves a lot of money in the quantity, which one could invest later for example in the suitable truck. So save on moving boxes and the truck for your move will be free of charge!
The cheapest offers currently
Tip: Click on the photos to go directly to the Amazon offer!
30 cartons for 34,99 – only 1,16 / piece – test winner
10 cartons for 12,99 – only 1,30 / piece
20 boxes for 26,99 – only 1,35 / piece
50 cartons for 61,99 – only 1,24 / piece
Early start packing
You have found all your helpers, you have informed them in time, so that almost everyone has found time, you have bought cheap moving boxes, now it is time to pack! Just as with the early announcement of the move date, you should not start too late with the start date for packing the cartons. Especially with items that you don’t need frequently in everyday life, it’s worth packing boxes early. After all, it’s not just the content in the cabinets that’s important, but also the cabinets themselves. The earlier you start packing smaller parts, the better you will be organized in the move, simply because you will have time to think and will not be under time pressure.
ABC Analysis
If you are still unsure which products you probably need and which products you can do without, it is advisable to do a small ABC analysis. We write the letters A, B and C on a sheet of paper. Below that we write in keywords things we can definitely do without, these we write under C. Under A we write products that we definitely need, for example our toothbrush. Under B we categorize the things we pack for example on the last weekend, as well as pots. The last few evenings you can order a pizza or make a pizza in the oven!
All items that you have under category C should be packed as early as possible. Remember our tip number three, part with items you no longer need. The more time you have, the better you can decide which items you don’t take into your new apartment or house.
Rent a moving van
Also with removal vans there are big differences, our basic tip and most importantly, rent yourself rather a number bigger!
Imagine this situation, you have 95% of all content in your truck and then you find that you have to do a second tour to get the rest. Many removals can be done in one tour if the truck is the right size. Savings tip, because here you can save not only kilometers, but also time. Larger models do not cost much more.
If your apartment is big enough and you have a room where all the furniture has already been removed, you can also build a small fictitious truck here. You will find the units of measurement of the trucks and the loading areas on the website of every online provider. All you have to do is use the folding rule and an adhesive tape to read the floor in the same format as the hold. For example, if your hold has a total length of 2.4 metres and a width of one metre, you start in a corner, go one metre to the side and 2.4 metres back. Pull your adhesive tape exactly along this line, so you have a perfect impression of what the future storage space will be like. If you have already packed your belongings well in advance, you can use this as a storage facility on the one hand and as an approximate unit of measurement for the storage space on the other.
Beneficial trucks for the move online hire
If you are looking for a cheap model for your move, then we have here a few recommendations of rentals that offer Germany-wide good savings prices.
Also remember to organize your move on the right day of the week. If you rent a moving transporter at the weekend, you are naturally in the midst of all orders. That means the prices on weekends are more expensive. If you choose a day during the week, you can save a few euros again. Especially for students but also for freelancers, seniors or self-employed a good option to keep one or the other Euro.
Billiger Mietwagen – Comparison portal for vans & trucks
Rent online: Truck at Sixt, Buchbinder & Avis
You can also rent trucks directly from the suppliers, as shown here for example with Sixt, Buchbinder and Avis.
Prepare moving accessories
When you fill your truck, you will find one or the other object that could slip through braking or sharp bends, for example. This can cause damage, especially to fabrics such as sofas, armchairs or other furniture. Think about the following things you may need for your move so that you can organize them in advance:
- Tension belts for lashing heavy furniture, such as sofas and cupboards
- Covers made of fabric for protection
- gloves for edges and wood
- Sack trucks for loading and easy rolling of crates and boxes
Change in time
Not everyone moves frequently, some move from home after vocational training or studies and then in 15 or 20 years. Not everyone knows that you have to change your address immediately after moving. Especially if you are moving for the first time, you will often think that you will not be able to register in time at the town hall due to stress and lack of time. The legal deadline for re-registration is currently 14 days after the move. Anyone who registers later can be fined a small amount.
It is important that you prepare the following documents for processing in order to be able to re-register successfully and quickly before your visit (source: City of Cologne):
- ID card
- Passport
- National passport and residence permit or visa
- For a re-registration in the family association, we need the identity documents of all moving persons
- Registration form with signature of the person obliged to register
- Certificate from the landlord that he or she has moved in
- Addition to the land register, notary contract or current real estate tax assessment notice
- Legal registration certificate Part I or vehicle registration
If you would like more information or details on the individual documents, you can find further information here: Reregister your residence.
The change of registration in the town hall or in the Einwohnermeldeamt does not cost any money, so you do not have to take any cash with you.
Apply for a no-hold zone
You will certainly know the chaos in the city centre, especially in the morning and after work all parking spaces are occupied. So that you don’t have any problems even in the morning or have to argue with an aggressive driver, it is worthwhile to apply for your own no stopping zone in advance of the move.
It is not difficult to apply for such a general no stopping zone for a few hours. This is how you apply for your no stopping zone:
- The regulations vary greatly depending on the city – deadlines range from 48 to 96 hours
- Start your search best with Google: “Halteverbotszone Berlin” or “Halteverbotszone Frankfurt”, depending on where you live
- On the websites of the cities you will then find the exact information and contact addresses for your city
Hire a crane instead of towing
Whoever moves from the country to the city often moves from the ground floor or the first floor up to the fifth or sixth floor. Especially in the inner cities, many buildings and real estate are still equipped with small stairwells, after all, square meters of area is cash money when it comes to building houses. The more living space is available, the more rent can be earned. This is why many stairwells are very narrow.
In many apartment buildings in the city centre, elevators were also retrofitted so that the stairwells were reduced in size again. In particular with bulky furniture, such as large cupboards or sofas and beds, one quickly gets problems in the narrow corridors of the staircase. For many removals it is therefore worthwhile to rent your own removal crane. This crane is lightweight. It is driven against the house wall, simply transported up to the sixth or seventh floor and simply transports the furniture along the outside wall of the house, slightly tilted, downwards. Instead of dragging furniture through stairwells in a complicated way and taking hours of time, you can move with significantly fewer helpers and significantly less time.
Recommendations for moving cranes (Germany)
There are companies in every German city that offer such special cranes for the move. You can find good offers on Erento, for example. The portal is simple and like on Ebay, you can easily view and book offers. The price per hour is included in every offer:
