Moving

Last weekend we moved! Despite a previous bad experience with U-Haul, we decided to rent a cargo van from them. It was an Econoline 250, $20 per day plus $0.80 per mile; came out to $60 + $10 gas. My car insurance doesn't cover moving vans, so we got the $10 U-Haul insurance ($150 deductible).

The van was indispensable. Over the course of the day, we made three trips. Driving time was negligible; loading and unloading took about 4 hours for each trip, including breaks.

Trip 1

Armchair we found on the side of the road
All the boxes

We pretty much filled the van to capacity, volume-wise. The hand truck made life a lot easier, though not quite as easy as if we had hired a couple day laborers that were hanging out at the U-Haul place. With the hand truck, I could move 4 boxes at once. The elevator turned out to be the bottleneck in the operation. If we had two hand trucks, perhaps we could have operated the three legs (van to elevator, up the elevator, and elevator to apartment) asynchronously for increased efficiency.

Trip 2

Sofa, old armchair, coffee table, bed, mattress, sewing machine, miscellaneous things

Van wasn't packed as tightly this time. We definitely had fewer things this run, but it still took about the same amount of time as before.

Trip 3

Desk, bookshelf, chairs, Lacks, more miscellaneous things, fish

Moving the fish was extremely stressful. I practiced on the spare tank first; water is quite heavy and sets up a standing wave (sloshing mode) in the tank quite readily...it's massive enough to affect your walking pattern, and if you're not careful about how you respond, your attempts to compensate end up 180° out of phase.

After that, we decided to move the fish into tupperware for transport. After much difficulty and freaked-out fishes, SC was able to net the rasboras. We had to put a lid on the tupperware to foil the escape attempts of Big Fish (a.k.a. Two-Stripe Fish). Shrimp swam into the net very eagerly and did laps around the tupperware while the rasboras huddled together. The cowfishes and Oto were much more wary of the net. After seeing how freaked out they got, we decided they'd just have to go with the tank.

We drained a lot of the water out of the tank, but even so, the gravel made it extremely heavy. Carrying the tank down to the van was, without a doubt, the most stressful part of the move. Once in the van, we put some more water back in to give the fishes a bit more breathing room.

At the new apartment, we used the filing cabinet (which has casters) to move the tanks. This was infinitely better than carrying them by hand. We got the tanks set up again pretty quickly. The gravel settled a bit; the overhanging rock had fallen over and some plants (including Nana) had gotten uprooted, but there wasn't an explosion of dirt and debris like I had feared. Cowfishes were a lot more skittish over the next several days, but they're getting back to their usual selves now.

Trip 4

Lamps, miscellaneous things

By now, it was very late and we were tired. This was a very small load, simply the few remaining things that would be hard to transport in the car (though we did leave out the plants, because we didn't want to deal with them that late at night, and the bikes, which was an oversight).

Learnings

Loading and unloading took longer than we expected. Having a plan for van usage would have helped. Boxes were an efficient way to move things. Fish are difficult to move.