So I’m moving in just over 2 weeks time. Not very far but still, it means packing up my material world & then unpacking it into my new place. To say I hate moving would be a massive understatement. I loathe it.
The loathing is mainly caused by the amount of stuff I have. 7 years of renting in Dublin means I have accumulated quite a lot of gear. When I moved last summer it took my poor dad 4 trips with his big-ass Ford Scorpio & a lot of lifting. Since then I’ve been to Ikea twice & that’s enough said right there. I want to do a serious clear-out this time around & need some advice on the hows and wheres of recycling my unwanted gear.
- Clothes - I have lots I want rid of. Not torn or destroyed, just well-worn. Who should I give to/where/how?
- Books - talking nerdy stuff here that’s probably out of date such as the Director MX 2004. Straight into the recycling bin or stow away in the attic to laugh at it in years to come?
- Packing - considering using those vacuum bag things but haven’t used them before – are they any good? Any caveats/recommendations ?
- Moving - (all going well) I’m moving to a house within the same little development I currently live in. It’s a 5 minute walk from my 3rd floor apartment down to the house around the corner. A shopping trolley would be ideal for moving but sadly, I don’t own one. Ideas for an alternative or have you got a trolley I can borrow?
Advice on any of the above would be superb, particularly the clothes side of things. Oh and of course, like I said last time, I’m never moving again 
Hiya, so you should donate your clothes to your nearest charity shop or leave them in one of those baggys that get fecked in your mailbox for like ethiopian kids or something.
Books, you could bring them to Chapters maybe you’ll get a few bob for them.
For packing I highly reccomend giant tupperware, you can get them in argos cause you can see whats in them then they are very hard wearing and great to use later on for storage. Oh and they have wheels on them, and are stackable so you could wheel like four or five of them at once. You could put cds/dvds in a giant file thing, heatons do super cheap under bed storage bags are good for like bedding and clothes and easy to move and hide away. Oh and heavy duty black bin bags are always handy. Hope this helps – I learned all this from moving myself and himself to a whole other county all by myself.
Jailbreak a trolley from Tesco..they have plenty, they won’t notice!
Steph,
here are my suggestions:
Clothes: Bring them to SVP or Oxfam. There is a biggish shop just off Gardiner Street. If you use the bags they collect, make sure that the alleged charity is real. Many bags are collected for the benefit of purely commercial companies. I would NEVER use one of these plastic bags through the door.
Books: Oxfam takes books, SVP too. If you KNOW that nobody will ever buy them you can put them in the recycling bin. Not too many ppl in an Oxfam shop would be looking for Director MX2004, but other stuff might still have a use for others. 2x vacuum bags for 4 Euro/6 Euro (different sizes) in Penney’s!
Packing: The best are still banana boxes. Extremely sturdy and free. Unfortunately you don’t get them in all shops anymore AND you will have to collect them over time (and need to bring them home first). Apart from that computer boxes are quite good. In general use small boxes for books/paper and big boxes for clothes. For duvets+pillows the vacuum bags are brilliant. For other clothes they don’t reduce the volume by THAT much.
Moving: If it took your dad 4 trips in big car, then it will be 10-15 trips with shopping trolley. Not the best idea! Either get your dad back or see if you can get a bunch of friends with cars to help. This is a good idea anyway: Get as many friends to help as possible!! I did once a move within the same building (4th floor to 1st floor) on my own and it nearly killed me. Lure your friends with some Take Away Pizza as a reward afterwards.
If you get just HALF of your Twitter followers to help, you could build a human chain between the two places! 
The JellyMonster suggestions are good, but assumes that you have lots of space to store the containers afterwards and if you have to buy them new it could become pricey.
Good luck!
Give the books to a library (don’t know if they’ll accept them…) so others can learn from them!
Hi Steph!
I used ot move every year… so was light and organised.
Then I moved to Dublin and stayed in the one house for 4 yrs!
Took me an age to get sorted but here are my tips.
Clothes – if they are well worn then clothes bank.
if they are good and not well worn Oxfam or the like
Books – Oxfam (i felt great when I went in there with a HUGE rucksack and two other bags of Books/DVDs/CD’s as I never had money to donate but this was a great donation!
Packing – Argos do a good selection of packing things, the vacuum bags are good but don’t get the cheap ones, they don’t last. Same for their packing boxes, I got crappy archive ones cheaply from them once, rubbish! But the next time I got great ones for just a little more (or if you have access to office supply provider the Impega Archive boxes are just amazing for moving and long term storage of stuff) and don’t scrimp on the packing tape on the bottoms of ALL boxes!
Moving – I second Joerg, ask mates … five/ten try and get them there for four hours and be organised and packed when they get there… then MOVE MOVE MOVE… then repay with pizza and beer! its a housewarming and moving all in one and worth its weight in saturated fats!
Best of luck!
Elf!
Thanks so much everyone for your help & ideas – loving the idea of getting a long line of Twitter followers to move me