By Olga Riano

When I was young and courageous, one of my favorite activities in life was traveling.  I decided I wanted to visit as many cities as I could, so I changed careers a couple of times, looking for reasons to move to different cities.  Searching for new schools in places I wanted to go to.  I became an environmentalist.  This way I could travel and work at the same time.  I would get to move as many times as my job required me to and I could earn some money doing it too.

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As I traveled so much, I learned how to pack light, but I always felt I was a little bit too nomad.  I never had a permanent place to stay: No home, no properties, no refrigerator of my own, no pictures to hang on my own walls, and worst of all nobody to share my traveling with.  I was all by myself.

During one of my job assignments I had to visit a project where a new port would be built.  I was going to verify the environmental standards for the projects design.  This is where I met the traveling man that would make me want to move to the moon if he asked me too.  He was the supervisor for the whole project. I didnt like him at first because we were so different in what environmental requirements were most fit for the project, but when he finally gave in I fell in love instantly.

We got married and after a year my first child was born and my moving passion became a secondary priority.  My husband however, still works as an infrastructure supervisor, so we do get to travel a lot with him.  We still move every couple of years to a new city, but things are different now.  Today I think of all the things my kids need, the whole packing chaos, and the high stress levels of putting my children in a car or airplane every time we move.

Dont take me wrong I still love traveling and meeting new cities and people, its just the moving, packing, unpacking, forgetting, buying again, leaving behind, that Im not so into anymore.  Things arent the way they used to be when I just took a backpack and left everything else behind.  Today I have to worry about my husbands studio, the childrens school, canceling water, gas and electric bills, new phone lines, babys stroller, high chair, car seat etc.

The first few moves were a nag, but after a while I had to set some very special moving rules to make my life easier and the moving process a lot less stressful. Id like to share some of these œmoving the family rules, so travelers like me can make it easier on their families when moving around.

Moving the Family Rules

R1. Dont let the kids help when packing breakables. Its very dangerous, mostly for the breakables.
R2. Always cancel electric, gas, and water bills at least 1 week before you move; eat out or have delivered, you dont want to wash dishes, which youve probably already packed. Tell the kids youre œgoodbye camping the house
R3. If you are moving with a moving company and have the budget, always get full service, since they pack and unpack, they are also committed to responding for any broken or damaged belonging.
R4. Tell your kids they can take 1 box of their favorite stuff, which they can pack themselves, this will entertain them long enough and convince them they are helping out on the move.
R5. If you have plants you dont want to leave behind, have them loaded onto the truck last, this way they will suffer less.
R6. If you have pets like a dog or a cat, dont feed it 1 day before the move, he will be hungry but wont barf in the car.
R7. If you have fish, dont even bother taking them with you, give them away and buy new fish at your new location. Tell your kids theyre in the truck with everything else.
R8. Never use old boxes when packing heavy stuff; old boxes are not steady; not good when packing books, dishware or breakables. Buy the boxes provided by the moving companies
R9. If your kid lost his favorite toy, tell him its in the moving truck and buy a new one for him, if you cant replace it with an exact one, have him evolve into having a brand new favorite.
R10. Convince your children that youre always moving to a better place, fill them with expectations regarding new school and friends, and comfort them on friends left behind.  It is very important for children to learn about and understand change.  Encourage them to call their old school friends on the phone once in a while.
R11. Tip the movers.  They always work better when you tip them, especially since they are handling all your stuff.
R12. Play station portables are the way to go on long car trips.  Children will stay quiet for good.
R13. Leave old things behind or give them away, even to the movers, they know what to do better than just taking things to the trash.  Since many of them have just arrived from foreign countries they can even use your old things in their new homes.
R14. Always have furniture wrapped, its incredible how dirty those moving trucks can get on the inside.
R15. Dont pick a moving company based upon the economic rate they give you initially, it will never be the same rate by the end of the move.  Choose them based upon real recommendations from people you can call and ask about their service.
R16. Sales people at moving companies are very smart and convincing, ask to speak to the manager and if he sounds like a good guy, he probably is, go with your gut, you will probably be right.
R17. Never sign any paper at destination before your move has been completed successfully.
R18. Try to get there before the movers do (it usually is this way) because they will start unloading as soon as they get there.
R19.  Try to move during the summer, moving when it rains is not a very good idea, your things might get spoiled. However, if youve already decided to move, pick a date and book it, because everybody wants to move during the summer and if you take too long in picking a date, you might have to wait.
R20. Never mess with your husbands paperwork, let him do the packing on that one and save yourself a lot of trouble explaining why the prints were folded instead of rolled.

Believe it or not, these are careful considerations made by a woman with 3 kids and loads of stuff who has to move every couple of years and has taken the time to think about the most annoying and complicated steps in the moving process.

I believe I have built some experience on identifying good and bad moving companies over the years, but lately I have been using the same service to pick the company that I feel is the best.  Internet moving portals are very useful tools designed to help you decide which moving company is best for you.  I have found a moving portal that will give me all the information I need.  They even give me the phone numbers for the school district Im moving to. The best part of it is that the moving companies that Ive hired searching through www.vmoving.com have been the best moving companies Ive moved with yet. I thank the Internet for having this online means available   and I expect to keep moving with the companies provided by vmoving.com and recommend it to everyone.

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By: Charlotte D´Costa

Renting an apartment may be quite expensive, especially if youre moving to a big city like Los Angeles, California. I come from a small town in southern California called Escondido, and I decided to taste a little LA action so I took off to study at UCLA.
I first came to my aunts house in the San Fernando Valley, but after a few weeks she began to get a little edgy and started to ask when I would find a place of my own.  My studying expenses were pretty high and freshman year was hard on my schedule, so finding an apartment was an extra task for which I had little or no time.
As I walked trough the campus I found not few but many ads by people searching for roommates to share apartments with.  I figured, why not. The first girl I met was an Asian sophomore who hated rugs.  She said she was allergic to dust and rugs were nothing but dust factories that would make her sneeze till she bled. I didnt see a problem with not having a rug so we signed a 1-year lease on a two-bedroom apartment in Venice.  Big mistake! She began to annoy me when she decided we couldnt go in the apartment with our shoes on, but I thought what the heck shes Asian, its her culture.  But by the sixth time I woke up at 11:00 pm to the loud sound of the vacuum cleaner, I decided we had to have the cleaning fetish talk. She was very condescending about the vacuuming hours and never vacuumed again after 6:00 pm. I consider myself quite tidy, but this girl went overboard. After the vacuum incident, she got the idea that it would be good for us to set some kind of cleaning schedule. We would take turns doing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, wiping the windows, etc. The first couple of months were ok, but then she began to criticize all my cleaning habits, the bathroom was always done wrong, she cleaned the kitchen right after me and my allowance was mostly spent on Windex and Clorox. I decided it was her time to move out, the only problem was telling her.
We got in a big fight about kitchenware and furniture, but I was so anxious for her to move that I let her have a lot of the stuff we had bought together. Packing was a real hassle.  She was very picky about letting strangers go over her stuff, so we had to do her packing.  Of course I helped because she was taking so long.  After the self-packing experience I decided when I moved I would hire a full service moving company.  I guess they know how to pack things better, since I ended up breaking a few porcelains and dishes. I dont really care about movers going trough my things as long as they dont keep anything, but it sure is a lot better if they do the packing.  They have the experience and knowledge in handling stuff better than me, its their job to know.
Choosing a moving company was also a big deal.  She wanted to speak personally to the manager, and not many moving companies are willing to let customers into their office. I have no idea why, since they come into your house and you trust them with your belongings. I think the offices are located at the storage facilities and warehouses and letting people in might be dangerous for them in case anything gets lost, or maybe theyre just messy.  Who knows?  When she finally moved out she paid about twice as much as the initial quote from the moving company.  I thought it was a scam and if it had been me, I wouldnt have paid them, but I really wanted her out so I encouraged her to pay.
We never spoke that much again after she moved out. But I dont really miss her that much either.
I posted an add for a while at the university campus and not long after that, people began to call my cell phone looking for the advertised room. Whenever I had space between classes I would go and meet with all sorts of characters.  I interviewed about a hundred people before I decided it would be best if I picked a stereotype and just went for that.  My friend told me guys are better roommates because they make less fuzz about details. So I thought I would go for the American, male, clean student.  I met with a few but I was always going back to my ex-roommate and thinking she gave me the ability to be extra picky about neatness so it was pretty hard for me when all the people I met were hairy and most of them looked like shower was a luxury they couldnt afford.  Most of the people at the university dont shower not because theyre dirty, but because studying gives you little time for anything else.

I finally went with the guy with short hair and khakis who studied some engineering major. He didnt have that much stuff to move and that was a good thing because I didnt want to get into the whole packing and moving deal again.  He had a truck and it was a smooth easy self-move.  His friends helped and two days later we were sharing breakfast.  My mother wasnt too happy about me living with a man I barely knew, but I was ok, I felt I had someone to take care of me, even if we werent in a real relationship. As a man, he liked beer and football, but specially girls.   In the beginning I didnt care if he invited his pals over for games.  But hey, I like beer too, especially the one I buy.  He would offer my beer to his friends and when they were gone, he wouldnt even pick up the cans.  I decided I wouldnt buy any more beer and after the super bowl the apartment was pretty quiet for a while.

One night, when I was coming home from ladies night out in the city, I came home a little late and what I saw would have made me really angry if I hadnt been so drunk.  There he was on my couch with a skanky girl that looked like he took her out of a strip club, in her underwear dancing on my coffee table.  That night I went to my room puked and went to sleep.  The next day I woke up with one of the worst hangovers Ive ever had and didnt even remember the couch incident until I went in the kitchen and saw this girl going through my fridge and asking me for skimmed milk.   Wow! I couldnt believe her nerve. Out came Mike from the bathroom and started talking to me as if nothing was happening.  I went back to my room and got really pissed by myself. I didnt want to make a jealousy scene, although I wasnt really jealous, just mad.  As soon as she left I told Mike we had to set some boundaries and girls over would have to stay in his room, not all over my coffee table.  I cleaned the table and dusted the furniture like my old roommate had taught me and went to school.

When I came back I found movers in my house.  They were packing everything!!! My couch, my table, my fridge, everything was going in the truck. I freaked out and began to scream at them, but they showed me the moving order and my stupid roommate had hired full packing and moving service of my entire apartment.  I tried to convince them it was a mistake and told them they would be stealing from me, but they just shrugged their shoulders and said to me,  œtake it with our boss. I called the moving company and got in a big fight with the manager before he gave me the only solution possible: pay for unpacking.  In the meanwhile, these guys were sitting outside my house on my couch, laughing and having their coffee break in a mixture between Arab and Spanish language that I think they didnt even understand.  This pissed me off even more. I couldnt understand if they were laughing at me or what.
I put the foreman on the phone with the manager and they spoke in Spanish for a while.  After he hung up he asked me for a thousand dollars.  I told him I didnt have that kind of money cash and that I would write him a check, but he sat on the lawn and said he would wait for me to go to the ATM and take out the cash.  No check, he said.  I figured if I left the house, they would finish up packing my stuff and by the time I was back Id be furnitureless. I asked him to please come with me to the bank but he refused.  I called my friend and told her to meet me at the apartment, she had class but I explained the situation to her and she skipped class for me. 40 minutes later my friend was home.  I told her to stay there and keep the guys away from the door while I came back from the ATM, which was fortunately about 8 blocks away.  I took 1200 dollars from my account and felt I was being drained unfairly from my long saved money, but I went home thinking, it would all be over soon.
When I came back, the foreman said it had been 3 hours since the incident and I had to pay those extra hours too.  He said he had missed another move in Long Beach and I had to pay for his time.  That really annoyed me. So I told him if he didnt put my things back immediately I would call the police.  We got in a heated discussion for a while and he was so undisturbed with the idea that I began to dial the phone.  He took the phone from my hands and told his crew to unpack the truck.  I guess he was scared inside, but seemed really calm in the outside.   The only one that barely spoke English was the foreman, and I believe he cursed at me in Spanish as they left.

I gave them a thousand dollars just to put my stuff back in the apartment, and they didnt even bother to unpack.  Now I had all my things in bubble wrapper and carton boxes.  But Mike was the sole responsible one for this mess.  Although I was pretty furious about all the fighting with the moving company, I knew deep inside they werent responsible for anything.  In the end who knows how many weird people they move every day, how many boxes they pack and unpack everyday, how much a fridge or a washing machine weighs in and out of a moving truck everyday.  I wasnt really angry at them I was angry at Mike and I was angry at myself for believing guys were simpler roommates than girls.

I decided to try and live by myself for a while; I was sick and tired of roommates.  But rent was high and living is expensive, especially for a student, I cut down on everything from toilet paper quality to peanut butter.  I began to steal the ketchup and mustard sachets and napkins from fast-food places where I barely went in except when my friends invited me.     After my friend saw me taking the soap from the ladies room at a restaurant I felt really miserable and ashamed so I told her I was having a hard time keeping up with rent by myself.  She told me to give it one more try, she encouraged me to place an add on Craigs list and assured me that 2 out of 3 was more than enough.   She said a third roommate would be a good one and that it was statistically impossible for me to go wrong again.

So once again, I did.  I went through interviews again and again.  I asked for references and called parents, but I thought inside myself, œparents know nothing, they believe their sons and daughters are all wonderfully perfect.  Asking parents isnt really an objective option.
I was about to give up when I got a call from my cousin in Caliente Nevada, asking me if I had a room available.  She said she would be studying at West Los Angeles College and needed a place to stay. I hadnt seen he in a while, probably since we were 10, but I figured family is better than nothing.  Since she was moving from Nevada, she hired a local moving company from the area.  It was a 2-man crew. They were permanently calling her and me about the status of the move.  They wanted to know about elevator access, stairs, address, truck access, everything.  They asked me when I would be home so they wouldnt interfere with my business.  I thought they were pretty careful about all the details.  Not like the other guys, which left all my things lying around for me to put back in place. They got home at about 5:00 pm and began to unload everything, asking where it should go, if it was ok for them to unload here or there.  They even helped unpacking the dishes and clothes.  Since my cousin wasnt there yet, I told them it would be a while for her to arrive, but they didnt seem to mind.  They sat out in the truck until I felt bad and invited them in.  We spoke about moving companies and my experience with roommates.  They laughed at me and recommended me to read the contracts before signing any binding estimates. They also recommended I go to moving portals online and read the articles on moving tips and personalized moves.   They said it was also a good idea to background checks on moving companies and ask for references from friends before choosing a moving company.  I guess the moving business is a very competitive one     and thats why customers have so many tools in order to make the right decision.  I was very happy about their service and promised them I would recommend them to everybody. My cousin found them online through www.vmoving.com and we were both very grateful with their service.
My cousin forgot to tell me she had a dog.  At first I thought it would be a real problem since dogs are noisy and hairy and messy. But I kind of fell in love with the mutt and hes fairly clean.  I take him out everyday and although I hate to pick up after him, I think he gives me a few minutes to think about the importance of patience and tolerance when you live with a roommate.   Ill be finishing my studies soon and who knows, maybe Ill get a job out of town and will have to move again.  Anyhow, now I know about all my possibilities and I wont have to think twice before taking my time in choosing a moving company that can offer me the real deal without going through all the trouble I went through before.  My best advice now to anyone who reads this article is read a lot, ask a lot and remember cheap is sometimes more expensive, so get the best, its your stuff on the line when you move, when you pick a roommate and when you decide to share a place.

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