Moving is not "Green"

At least not when you're lucky enough to have a moving company pack and move you.

The movers wrapped EVERYTHING in paper. Every single shoe, piece of tupperware, stapler, EVERYTHING. I can't tell you how much longer it took to unpack all those neatly wrapped packages. Luckily the girls really enjoyed helping me unwrap. Their excited squeals would make you think it was Christmas morning even though the plain wrapping paper held things like kitchen bowls, my tennis shoes and extension cords.

With their help, I finally got my last box unpacked on Friday. And what I was left with was 75 flattened cardboard boxes and 22 large trash bags stuffed with packing paper. Add to that stack of no longer needed items: a couple of ceiling fans we replaced, a bunch of stuff the old owners left behind, some furniture that didn't fit in the new house, and a whole lot of stuff that would have been donated/sold before the move if we had packed ourselves and you have an extra large stack of "trash".

Here are the avenues I used to keep the majority of it out of the landfills in an effort to make the move a little more "green" (and I even made a little pocket cash along the way).

1. Craigslist - I decided to try to resell our boxes. They were really nice and heavy and had only been through a 38 mile move. I listed them on craigslist and got a call the very next morning. They were all gone an hour after that to a family that was in a bind and had to move quick. I also used craigslist to advertise some other "big stuff" we had to sell.

2. Uhaul's Box Exchange Another resource for buying and selling (and finding free) boxes is Uhaul's Box Exchange. If you are moving or have just moved, you should definitely consider using either of these two services to find boxes or get rid of your boxes.

3. A Good Old Fashioned Garage Sale - I only advertised with a few signs in the neighborhood and a free ad on Craigslist and I made $250 off my unwanted stuff and "trash".

4. Local Used Book Store - $22 in store credit for a handful of my unwanted books. Sweet.

5. City Recycling Center - I was hoping to get rid of all my bags of packing paper on Freecycle but it rained and most of the bags of paper got wet - no longer making it ideal reusable packing paper. Our city recycling center will take the remaining bags of paper and if I take them directly to the center, i won't have to get rid of one per week in our recycling can for the next 20 weeks.

6. Freecycle - I have been a member of Freecycle ever since I moved to CA. I even got a free piano a while back (remind me to ask Tracy M about restoring old pianos). It's a really amazing organization. During my membership I don't think I have ever seen something offered that wasn't taken -- doesn't matter how random or useless the item seems to be. On Freecycle I got rid of an old microwave, an old copy machine (both left by the previous owners) and 8 bags of packing paper (the ones that didn't get wet in the rain).

7. Goodwill - All the stuff that wasn't sold in the garage sale, on craigslist or given away on Freecycle (which was only 1 box and 1 bag of stuff) was loaded up in the car and taken to the Goodwill trailer in town.