We Finally Settled In: First Time Moving Tips for a Short-Distance Condo Move

When Dane and I got married, we moved in together to our first home bringing only our personal belongings with us—mostly just our clothes and gadgets, and not much else. Because of that, furnishing meant having appliances and furniture delivered and assembled in our then-new home. It was easy because most of them came in flatpacks and our scheduled deliveries were staggered across multiple days to allow us to assemble them and settle in without rushing. The condo unit also came with some existing items like a washing machine and a built-in cabinet, so we didn’t have to buy some of the items we would have needed otherwise.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, we moved out of that first home to our now-new home, about 2.5km away. It’s also a condominium but now farther away from the Central Business District (CBD). Those moving days were long and tiring but now that we’ve settled in, here are some of the things we think we did well on and things we learned from moving houses, even if it’s just short-distance!

Here are 10 tips from first-time short-distance condo movers:

Find out condo requirements and limitations ahead of time.
One thing to know about condo living is that there are stricter rules to follow compared to a standalone house and lot in a non-gated community. For one, moving out and moving in, and even deliveries of big items can only be done within a specific time block, usually Mondays to Saturdays between 8am to 5pm depending on the Property Management Office (PMO) of the condominium. Work permits and gate passes also have to be prepared and approved ahead so you don’t encounter any issues with moving out or in. The last thing you want to happen while moving houses is missing a requirement and panicking about what to do when the movers are already right by the entrance.

One of the fascinating things we also learned while preparing for our move is vertical clearance. In our case, any vehicle larger than a Traviz (a slightly larger version of the more known L300) won’t fit in the parking entrance. This meant that we could either get a smaller vehicle or do a much longer and more manual unloading and transportation. A smaller vehicle won’t work for us because we own a large refrigerator that we don’t want to lay down horizontally so we went for the latter. As part of the condo rules, all the items that needed third-party workers have to be manually unloaded from the compound’s entrance gate and transported via the parking driveway using push carts, across the basement 1 parking, and into the basement 1 elevator of our building. To me, that felt very risky and unsafe because you’ll be ferrying heavy and bulky items walking down a slope. It was our biggest fear.

Declutter before packing.
You’ll collect a lot of things you don’t really need or want to keep for long. Before packing up your items for moving, it’s the perfect time to give away or dispose of items you don’t want to bring with you anymore so you have to pack and transport fewer things.

Group and pack related items together.

You’ll be surprised by the amount of work needed to pack all the smaller things. They really add up! One important piece of advice I can share about condo moving is to pack your items into more manageable groups. I’m talking about making sure that similar items are together (like putting screws for that one cabinet into one ziplock bag) and related items (like all toiletries in one box) are also together.

My in-laws were kind enough to help us ferry some of our items ahead, particularly the valuables and breakables. We did a total of 4 trips in an SUV (Xpander). It surprisingly took an hour each trip to unpack, pack, transport, unpack, and go back despite the distance being only 2.5km away. This was one of the things we severely underestimated.

My kuya (older brother), Bryan, was kind enough to help us pack some of the items while we were doing those trips. He took two days of paid time off just to help us! We’re grateful because we definitely didn’t think it would take that much time in the morning and we had the truck scheduled to arrive by 1pm. I love him to bits but he’s not the best at organizing. He ended up dumping different items to where he can find space, be it that one large Megabox or the one of the drawers. It might have been due to the time restriction we had, but I had additional headache during post-move-in because some smaller items were scattered around in different locations. Case in point, I found coasters in my work drawer, and I’m still missing 2 curtain rings for our shower and still have no idea where they are now. RIP.

Having big but manageable boxes will save your life.

Smaller items can be transported easier and faster when you stuff them in larger boxes (we used 95L Megaboxes). In our case, we were fortunate enough to borrow these boxes from my in-laws. We planned on buying them, but we were surprised to know they’re very expensive now at ₱1,500 each.

Our tactic was to chuck items inside the Megaboxes and use each of the condo’s trolleys to help us transport those boxes from and to the unit and the car. We also used the same Megaboxes to contain other smaller boxes during the truck transportation. It was so much easier.

Don’t have a pet around during moving day.
We left our dog, Milo, in a dog hotel overnight the day before our move so we didn’t have to worry about taking care of him during the chaos of condo moving. This was definitely a good decision as we were definitely too tired and too busy to take him out to do his business and worry if he’d run off or not while the doors were open as people move the items. Within the same day, we decided to extend his stay for another night so we could deal with the post-move-in stress the day after and get a bit of rest without the stress.

Hire professional movers like Transportify.
Having a car to transport valuables and breakables was definitely helpful, but in reality, not many of us have huge trucks to carry big appliances and furniture. We enlisted Transportify’s services for our move. One of the main reasons we chose them over other similar transportation services is because they’re known for house moving. They even had rental services for items like push carts so we didn’t have to purchase them.

We initially got the small closed van of Transportify (it was 10ft x 6ft x 6ft) but were lucky to get assigned a bigger truck (more info ahead). All in all, we paid ₱2,179 to Transportify for the truck, the transportation, 1 additional helper (total of 2 + the driver), and the rental of push carts. All the helpers were also super nice and they all knew how to work together.

This isn’t a sponsored post (I wish!), but do use our Transportify referral code: uc7b9f7 during sign-up in case you’re moving, too. We genuinely liked the services we got!

Get additional helpers.
Delegate the task of moving items by getting additional helpers with some additional fees. It’s worth the price! For us, they were professional movers who have done this so many times and have definitely gotten the experience and skills needed to safely move your items.

Apart from that, considering we weren’t the ones moving the items and loading/unloading them, we were still very tired. Even for myself who had zero physical involvement in carrying, all the coordination, organization, and overseeing that came with planning, moving, and post-moving made me so exhausted. I couldn’t imagine if we had to do them, too.

My kuya was also super helpful and we couldn’t have done the move successfully if he wasn’t around to assist us especially in disassembly and reassembly.

Plan and assign people to tasks ahead of time.
I think we did pretty well in terms of teamwork during the moving day. Dane was in charge of the transportation and logistics. That included coordination with the truck and overseeing the items being loaded, unloaded, and carted across the basement, and the safety of items as they consolidated them near the elevator prior to going to the unit.

On the other hand, I handled finishing up the packing of the remaining items (because of how we underestimated the time) and telling the helpers what goes where as they deliver the items to the unit in several batches. I was also organizing and making space as they hauled the items to the unit to make sure there was enough space for the bigger items as well as assembling some of the furniture. I also did most of the post-move-in fix to empty out all the Megaboxes and the two luggage we used and put items where they should be.

My brother was mainly in charge of the disassembly and reassembly of furniture and assisting us wherever else we needed him like running to the convenience store because we didn’t pack up enough drinking water for us! Can’t express how grateful I am for his help especially because he filed for leave and worked the graveyard shift, so he was awake and doing so much work for a veryyyy long time while being tired and sleep-deprived.

Allocate more truck space than you think you need.

In our case, we only planned on disassembling bigger/irregular-shaped items that wouldn’t fit the door of both units because of the amount of work and time disassembly and reassembly would take. My brother was kind enough to help us with this. Even with 4 roundtrips to transport some of the smaller items ahead, fitting them into the truck was altogether a different headache. If you have more items, the kuyas you hire will have more trouble Tetris-ing your items in the truck, which will make the whole process much longer as well increase the risk of items breaking from stacking them.

We came from a 31sqm studio unit with big items only including one sofa, one cabinet, a huge fridge, a smaller drawer, and a worktable, but all the other smaller items filled out the 7ft x 6ft x 14ft truck too fast. All the more surprising when we did 4 trips just earlier in the day! If we’ve gotten the smaller truck we actually booked, it’ll be possible but surely more difficult to fit everything in.

Pack your things well.
We tied straw ropes to the doors of cabinets to prevent them from opening and becoming a safety hazard, which we believe to be a good decision.

But one of the things we decided not to do was wrap big items in cling wrap (or something else). We made the executive decision not to because cling wrap is expensive (P650 for a huge roll from the hardware), it’s added work to put and remove, and we’re only traveling 2.5km away! Even the staff in True Value told us it wasn’t as necessary and to just tell the truck driver to be careful in driving!

However, in not doing so, some of our wooden furniture were chipped (likely from dragging on the floor), and many of them were definitely dirty (like the part of the sofa in contact with the floor/truck, our mattress which we accepted had to be transported with beddings and just washed after) when they arrived to our new condo unit! Something to take note of if you’re particular about keeping your furniture pristine and dirt-free.

In summary

In general, I think we did pretty well for first-time movers. Good planning is definitely helpful in making sure nothing falls through the cracks. All in all, it took us about 5 hours to pack, about 3 hours to load, transport, and unload items from the truck (note that it’s only 2.5km), and about 6 hours of post-move in organization to fix the mess afterward. Still, I don’t think I want to do that again any time soon. LOL.