I get a lot of moving jobs where I will transport the furniture and other household items from one location to another, sometimes from the customer’s previous home to the one they have just purchased, other times from house or office to a storage facility or Goodwill. The moving jobs consist of mostly the same items to be re-located, furniture, such as sofas, beds, coffee and end tables, wooden book cases and dressers, night stands, wood cabinets, electronics (computers, TVs), boxes of dishes and clothing. the moves are all within the Los Angeles and Orange County areas and are mostly withing a few miles from the point of origin to destination. I do end up doing a lot of the office type moving jobs in Sherman Oaks for some reason, but that is OK.
A typical moving job will consist of transporting just a few items of furniture such as a heavy wood book case, cabinet, armoire or couch. Sometimes there will be a refrigerator or washer and dryer to be moved. I’ve moved some extremely heavy pieces of furniture that required a great deal of care and patience, often involving stairs or elevators. It may be four in the afternoon and I’ll get a call from a realtor who needs a sofa or entertainment center removed from a house their client has just purchased. If the furniture is in good enough condition I take it to the Goodwill.
I get household moves where I take some things to the new home of the customer, and others to a storage facility. I’ve had people hire me to re-pack their storage units after seeing how well I pack their junk or load their furniture for a move. I have a gift for organizing and have actually enabled clients to downsize from two storage units, down to one—with room in the unit left over. These are some of my favorite jobs. They are clean and organizing is something I do very well and just comes naturally. On some of my moving jobs the customer has me transport some of the contents in the storage unit to their home or office, and occasionally they will have me empty out the storage space. I get call from people who have been referred to me by the managers of storage facilities. That’s always a good feeling.
Recently we moved three armoires from a house the client had just sold in Topanga Canyon to a home they purchased in West Hills. These pieces of furniture were extremely heavy. There were only two of us on the move and home the armoires were coming out of had steps at the back porch and in the front of the house leading up to the front door. The armoires were made of old wood and had to be carried at points between using the dolly. The armoires barely fit through the door ways and there were tight corners to negotiate as well. Once at the new house we had to move the armoires several times before the customer was pleased with the placements.
Some household moving jobs go faster than others. We moved a family that moved from a house that was almost twice the square footage than the one we moved their things into. The sofabed wouldn’t fit where they had intended it to go, the refrigerator had to be placed in a different part of the kitchen than they had expected and the washer and dryer needed to be put outside. There was a piece of exercise equipment that was too big for a room they wanted it in and I had to take a new bunk bed set they had spent a great deal of money for, to the Goodwill because it was much too large to get into the child’s new bedroom. There have been times when a couch was too big to get through a doorway and had to be discarded. In that case I always take a sofa to The Salvation Army or Goodwill.