More about moving

We had the impression that our driver and his two helpers for moving were picked for us by the lady that we worked with because she knew they could handle a job of 17,000 lbs. When we moved from IN to MN, they did not expect us to have 10,000 lbs and they only sent one guy to load us. He was supposed to load most of the boxes and then later in the afternoon get a helper to help him load some of the larger furniture and then get on the road and start driving after that. He walked into our house and panicked, knowing that he couldn't load what turned out to be 10,000 lbs by himself in one day. So I requested that Bekins be better prepared this time and they were. I think my request got us one of the best drivers and his helpers that works for Bekins. Our driver goes all over the country moving people.
When they were almost done unloading us the driver said to me, "You win the prize for the best self-packed clients that I have moved all year." This meant a lot to me because of what I wrote above. Considering this is November, I doubt any one else will beat us! The one helper had said several times that if we would have let them pack we would have had less boxes, possibly even only half of the boxes. I'm not so sure about that because our boxes were full. When the driver made the comment about being the best self packed, he also said that some of our boxes were small, but those boxes were heavy and all of our boxes were full. Most self packers make the mistake of not filling their boxes. Towards the end I would have been tempted to not fill boxes, but the lady from church that volunteered to help us pack our kitchen filled up boxes even more than I would have.
When the man came to give us an estimate he saw that we had several plastic tubs (totes) in the basement. He was pleased to see that and told us to fill all of those tubs up. They stack and are great for moving. So when we packed we began by filling all the tubs before we packed boxes. We had 780 items before they counted beds and mattresses and they found a few items that they forgot to number in one of the closets. I didn't hear the final count of items, but I believe it was close to 800.
The other thing that helped us was I had saved all the boxes that our wedding presents and things we purchased over 10 years of marriage. When my parents came to help us pack, my dad's job was to put all the appliances and things like that in the boxes they came in. It was very easy to identify what was in those boxes and where in the house they went when the truck was unloaded. The packing material was all there for those. Also any time Ram's mom mailed us stuff or we purchased something and it came in a large box or a box that was a good size for moving books, we kept all those boxes. Our basement had lots of room for storage for those boxes. We were thankful for all those boxes at moving time.
When we got here about half of our belongings (nearly all of our books that are not theology books) are in the garage. When we unpacked what we need to live in this house that we rented, I did throw away the boxes that that stuff came in. We just don't have the room to store those empty boxes here. Many of those boxes survived two major moves. We live near several grocery stores and liquor stores that it will be easy to get boxes to pack the things that we unpacked for us to move across town to the house that we buy next year. We are hoping to never move again after we get in that house so at that point when we unpack everything I will throw out the remainder of the boxes.