The bottom line: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. If you’re ever unsure, just call Moveline. Ask us all the questions you want — we’ll never charge for a consultation. We can give you pointers on anything from how to move with a pet to how much ducks weigh, and offer tips for things like meeting your new neighbors along the way.

And by the way: if you do go with Moveline, we’ll take care of your inventory with our handy app.. Take a look and get moving now.

Whether it’s across town or across the country, Moveline will help get your stuff where it needs to be safely and on time. But if you’re a parent, your most valuable possessions won’t be on the moving truck. Your child may need a little extra care and planning when it comes to moving, even if her new bedroom is waiting just a few ZIP codes away. Here, some tips for making a move with kids as painless and stress-free as possible:

Explain, explain, explain

Your child or children probably didn’t have any input in the decision to move, which can make them feel a bit powerless. To lessen the impact of those feelings, give as much information as possible, as soon as possible.

1. Plan a good time to break the news, perhaps around a favorite meal. Explain the why, when, where and what to expect before, during and after the move. (Will she be packing her own things? What can go with him in the car and what goes on the truck? Will you be donating some of their old clothes and toys before you go?)
2. Be honest. Regardless of age, knowing the details – both positive and potentially negative – will help your child feel less out of control, especially if this is their first time moving.
3. Open the floor for questions and remain positive and non-defensive as you answer, validating her concerns. Be prepared to answer some of the same inquiries over and over again as the move date approaches. Kids, as we all know, often ask more questions when they’re looking for reassurance.

Plan ahead

If you’re still in the process of choosing a new home, consider what each of the potential locations will mean for your child. Where’s the closest day care? What school district will you be in? (If it’s still up in the air, here are some tips on choosing a school.) Does your new neighborhood have sidewalks? Where’s the nearest park? Family doctor? Once you’ve made your decision and your new place is definite, report any exciting finds to your kids to help them look forward to the change.

Set the tone

From beginning to end, try to maintain a positive attitude about the move and your child will often take your lead. Be realistic, but focus on the benefits of moving and of your new home. A little adventure can actually be a lot of fun, but it’s up to you to make sure they know that.

Keep the routines

Kids thrive on routine, familiarity and consistency. The unfamiliar is usually a little scary, so an across-town move can be confusing, while a big move to a new city or state can feel like a major disturbance, which could equal major stress for you! As best you can, maintain typical wake-up, mealtime and bedtime routines. If it’s possible, avoid introducing other life changes during this time, like potty training or transitioning to a big-kid bed. When you arrive in your new home, make getting your child’s bedroom in working order a priority.

Give ‘em a job

Giving kids a sense of purpose during the move is a great way to include them in the process. Tell them you’re depending on them to help you do a very important job and then offer a choice of two or three tasks. Listed by age-appropriate levels, here are a few ideas for moving jobs that are perfect for littler hands:

For younger kids:

• Small cleaning projects, like wiping countertops or windows
• Pack the clothes she’ll need for the first few days
• Decorate and fill a small box of important treasures that will stay with him on the way to the new home instead of going on the moving truck

For older kids:

• Make “keep,” “donate” and “sell” piles of toys, books and other belongings
• Take charge of a younger sibling
• Bring home a meal for everyone
• Minor home repairs, like removing finishing nails or touching up paint
• Make a detailed plan for her new room or living space, including paint colors

Make new memories

Especially if you use Moveline to help you find the right mover at the best price, you’ll be moved in before you know it, scratching your head over how easy it all was. With all the time you saved, your family can get started on putting down roots in your new environment. Participating in teams, clubs or activities hosted by schools or places of worship is a great way for everyone to feel connected more quickly. You may even want to sign yourself up for a free or low-cost pottery class or kickball league at your local recreation center or join a volunteer organization as a way of investing in your new community and making grownup friends in your area (or click here for a host of other ideas). And last but not least: a couple of fun storybooks to help your kids understand moving — Big Ernie’s New Home: A Story for Children Who Are Moving and The Berenstain Bears’ Moving Day. Because reading is fundamental, and so is the security of not feeling scared or alone in the midst of a move.

Let Moveline get your family from point A to point B without a hassle. Check us out and get started here.

Today is a hard day for Moveline. Unfortunately, we’ve had to lay off many of our team members as we shift in strategy to focus on developing a more efficient product line. Doing so is extremely difficult but is a necessary measure to set Moveline up for success in the future.

For the last 18 months, Moveline has been pursuing a strategy of using our technology to offer a broad variety of services to our customers and working with a wide range of moving company partners to accomplish this. Based on early success in this model, we began to aggressively grow the company and further expand our reach in the market. We rapidly hired talented Moveliners to support our customers with this mission.

But, as many startups do, we experienced growing pains in scaling the business this way and, after learning from this approach, have decided that it’s best for us to narrow our focus to what we’re best at.

We’ve decided to streamline our service offering and are making some changes to our product to suit a simpler, more satisfying moving experience. Doing so also required that we make some staffing adjustments and as a result, we had to say goodbye to some very talented Moveliners in order to more closely align with our service moving forward.

There’s no doubt this is a turning point in our business but I’m excited about Moveline’s future and confident that with the team we have in place and a fresh perspective on how to sustainably grow our company, we’ll be a stronger Moveline, capable of delivering an even better moving experience to our customers.

It would be an incredible understatement to say that I’ve learned a lot from this experience and I want to thank everyone for the dedication and the commitment they’ve invested in Moveline as we begin looking forward into the next phase.

We live in a do-it-yourself kind of world. From home improvements to tech gadgets galore, there’s not much we can’t at least attempt to accomplish on our own, and for a lot of folks, moving is one of those things. While hiring a professional mover can often be the wiser (and, surprisingly, cheaper) choice, a majority of people prefer to pack their own belongings instead of opting to let the pros do it. If that’s the case for you, don’t lift a finger before reading these five quick tips from the top-notch team here at Moveline to keep your stuff — and your sanity — in one piece before, during and after a move.

1. Don’t procrastinate

This one’s easy to preach but hard to live by. Truly, though — if you’ve got a full weekend to devote to getting ready for the move, use it. It may not seem like a big deal to “just throw everything into a few boxes,” but many are the men and women who have underestimated the time it takes to properly prepare themselves to move their entire lives into a completely new living space. Make a game of it if you have to: set an egg timer for 30 minutes, an hour, or whatever length of time you’d like, and challenge yourself to pack up 5 boxes, or an entire room, or whatever your goal may be. Repeat, and repeat again, until poof! You’re all done.

2. Ask for help

The Beatles most famously said, “I get by with a little help from my friends.” They said a lot of other stuff, too, but when you’re faced with a mountain of boxes or crates and a looming move-out date, it’s probably the best advice you could follow. Use these tips for throwing a packing party and get the job finished in one-third, one-fourth or even one-fifth the time it would have taken if you’d gone it alone.

And a pro tip: if you’re having trouble finding boxes and/or don’t know what to do with them when you’re through, you’re just one Google search away from the eco-friendly option of renting plastic crates. Many companies offer delivery and pickup, and they’re often cheaper than buying cardboard. The planet and your wallet will both thank you.

3. Label and color-code everything

Once they’re on the truck — whether it’s one you rented and are driving yourself, or one operated by moving professionals — most of those boxes are going to look awfully similar to one another, if not completely identical. Particularly if your move is a large one, don’t just scrawl the name of the room each box belongs in; add a few short bullet points afterward (coffee mugs, utensils, tupperware or textbooks, tax files, stationery, for instance).

Better yet, consider using a different color packing tape (or just spread a line of washi tape across a few sides of each box, again switching up the color or pattern for each room) for each room, just to make the load-in process that much easier, as well as the act of keeping your sanity as you try to get out of those boxes as quickly as possible in your new place.

4. Protect your breakables

This may sound elementary, but when you’re in the eleventh hour and don’t much care to spend extra time carefully wrapping those valuables, it’s all too easy to forget how much jostling (and bumping, and cracking, and shattering) just might take place during transit. So do yourself a favor and pack with an abundance of caution, making merry use of specialty boxes (wardrobe, wine glass, etc), bubble wrap, paper, and any other materials that can shield your possessions from destruction between your old home and your new one.

Oh, and we’ve got special tips to keep you sane and your stuff intact if you’re packing electronics or fine china. You’re welcome.

5. Don’t pack immediate essentials

Packing up that bathroom with one big swipe of your arm across the countertop? Not so fast. You’re gonna need toothpaste, face wash, daily meds, and so on within the first 24 hours of moving into the new space, so leave those out where they’re easily accessible. Likewise when it comes to Fido’s food, leash and waste bags, as well as plenty of other items you might need to access during or shortly after the move.

To make life a little easier, here’s a helpful list of documents to keep on hand (you know, just in case), as well as a checklist of what to keep handy on moving day, just to get you through the first day or two after your stuff comes off the truck.

Last but not least, if you’re hiring a mover for a local or long-distance move, let Moveline help. We compare prices, help you secure the best mover for the job, and lock in your rates so you’re not hit with any surprises in the middle of one of life’s most stressful events. Don’t go it alone. Let us help.

Moving to Atlanta? The first thing you should probably know about your soon-to-be home is that in just about any ranking of US cities with the most sprawl, Atlanta takes the top slot. That means that one of the top considerations when you’re looking for short-term housing (and long-term as well) is your commute. Luckily, here at Moveline, we’ve overseen our fair share of local and long-distance moves, and we’ve got tips for all sorts of places and living situations, including temporary housing in Atlanta.

First up: a tip on getting from point A to point B. Roone Unger, a contractor and owner of Exovations, a home improvement company in Atlanta, knows the unofficial capital of the south well. “If you can cut down on your commute time,” he says, “you’ll be happier and have more time to explore beautiful Atlanta. Keep in mind there is one major Interstate that runs through the city. It seems that no matter what part of 85 you are on or at what time of day, there is always some sort of delay. If you are able to take public transportation, look into that. If you don’t have a car, look for a place near a MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) station; trains run through the city and there are buses that connect some suburbs to downtown.”

Get an overview of Atlanta neighborhoods

Before you begin your search for a place to stay, get familiar with Atlanta by checking out Curbed’s Atlanta page. Covering the city’s real estate market, it gives a feel for some of the city’s neighborhoods. A recently-posted, decidedly politically incorrect, annotated neighborhood map which originally appeared anonymously on Reddit gives a no-holds-barred glimpse at the city’s neighborhood stereotypes. For its part, Curbed warns that it’s guaranteed to offend just about everyone.

Two other, more tonally straightforward sites to help orient newcomers to Atlanta are Trover and CoEverywhere. Trover lets you see photos of what people who live in a particular neighborhood like best — galleries, food shops, parks, etc. CoEverywhere lets you draw a circle around the area you want to explore and connects you to its real-time social media activity, including tweets, facebook posts, photos and more.

Reach out to friends (and friends of friends)

Speaking of social networks, they’re a vital part of any relocation. Telling all your contacts that you’re moving to Atlanta and looking for short-term housing can often cut out a lot of extra work. If you’ve got serendipity on your side, your search might go as smoothly as Thomas Nitzsche’s: he relocated to Atlanta from St. Louis for a job in early 2014. After checking out three places he’d found on Craigslist.com that ultimately weren’t what he wanted, he took a lunch break. The person he had lunch with — someone he’d met through a social app — turned out to have a home with a detached furnished carriage house in the Virginia Highland neighborhood, and he’d just decided to rent out. “It’s one of the best areas of the city,” Nitzsche says. “A few weeks later, I moved into it.”

Use online short-term stay resources

If you come up empty from your word-of-mouth campaign, you can always lean on those two old standbys, Craigslist and airbnb. A recent Craigslist search came up with a share in a recently renovated 900-square-foot two-bedroom condo near Peachtree Center for $500 per month. On airbnb, a 925-square-foot one bedroom plus sunroom sublet furnished in mid-century modern style and located across the street from Georgia State runs $2137 per month as of this posting.

If you’re unable (or too creeped out) to check out listings for yourself, you can get the folks at golook.com to scope out possibilities for you. Services, including a full report, start at $59.

The national site sublet.com is also worth a look. Two recent Atlanta listings included a one-bedroom in midtown near Piedmont park for $1220 including utilities and a totally renovated two-bedroom house in Buckhead with a big backyard or $4200 a month.

Other good places to look: atlanta.apartmenthomeliving.com, ListLux and Uloop (which specializes in properties near colleges and universities). And for sublets available primarily to academics, take a look at Sabbatical Homes, a site founded in 2000 by Nadege Conger, a professor’s wife who now runs the growing operation with the help of a multi-national team.

Find a roommate

Need help finding a roommate? Three nationwide sites that can help are roomster.com, roommates.com and roomiematch.com, and Atlanta’s own Roommate Locator can too. ListLux and Uloop, listed above, also offer listings with roommates from time to time.

Love is a many splendored thing… at least most of the time, right? When the time rolls around to start cohabitating, though, that’s when one of the many true challenges of a relationship can rear its ugly head, testing the mettle of even the schmoopiest of lovebirds. So, we’ve put together the ultimate guide for couples moving in together. It’s chock full of statistics, anecdotes, tips and advice. But for the “tl;dr” crowd, we’ve synthesized those points into a short blog post for your speed-reading pleasure. Here, a quick rundown of the dos and don’ts of moving for a relationship.

Know thyself

Moving across town to share an apartment with your favorite person is a big enough step on its own, but if you’re making a long-distance move, it’s imperative to ask yourself what a full-fledged relocation will do to the aspects of your life outside of your relationship. Will it hurt your career? Make it tough to stay in touch with friends and family? Sever your ties to people, places and things that are important to you? If so, think long and hard before you make the leap. The Moveline team isn’t made of relationship experts, but moving is indeed our specialty, which means we’ve met lots of people under lots of stress. Make sure you ask yourself if your bond with your significant other is strong enough to withstand all of it. (And make sure you ask them, too.)

Divide and conquer

So you’re a traditional homebody with an antique leather couch and a couple thousand books, moving in with a globetrotting minimalist whose only earthly possessions are a laptop, a futon and a suitcase? This might call for a compromise or two, on everything from decorating your space to setting realistic expectations of what your life under the same roof will be like.

Yeah, yeah, we know opposites attract and love conquers all, but you can probably avoid a few epic fights just by being open about your desires and expectations before you ever pack a box. Figure out well in advance what earthly possessions are most important to each of you vs. what can be given away, repurposed into something else or sold on Craigslist, and talk openly about what you want life together to be like. Early mornings and cozy evenings in, or all-night parties and wild weekend roadtrips? Half the fun of moving in together is learning each other’s hidden quirks, but before the novelty wears off, figure out how to meet in the middle, give one another space and respect each other as individuals. That’s how the strongest relationships thrive.

Figure out those finances

It’s long been said that money is the leading cause of divorce, and probably often breakups too. So sit down with the object of your affection and don’t just figure out the monthly budget (i.e., Are you going 50/50 on rent? Who pays for toilet paper/coffee beans/Netflix? Whose name goes on the utilities bill?); ask those deep, sometimes uncomfortable questions about how each of you deals with your dollars. The Motley Fool offers a great, free exercise (requiring just an email sign-up) to help you clear the air with one another about your attitudes toward money and how you spend it. Conversations like these can help you better understand where your future challenges might lie and give you the tools you need to cut them off at the pass.

Most importantly, keep the lines of communication open about everything under the sun. Check out our guide for detailed advice on moving for love, and of course, enlist Moveline’s help when it comes time to hire a mover and get going. We’ll help you compare movers, hire the right one, and save money, time and stress along the way. Because who wants to waste extra energy on all that stuff when there’s a his-and-hers (or his-and-his, or hers-and-hers) nest out there, just waiting to be yours together?

In such an age of excess, the environmentally conscious among us can get a little nervous when it comes to outfitting a new home with all-new furniture and decorations to match. That’s why it’s such good news that there are so many resources online that champion creative reuse projects, showing us ingenious ways to transform one thing into another.

Sure, entering into a DIY project can mean setting oneself up for failure. (To wit: see comic geniuses Katy+Katie, the YouTube purveyors of, well, Pinterest fails, basically. Every few months, they take some internet advice and apply it to real life, usually with tragicomic, i.e. classic, results.) But it can also mean making something cool out of something unexpected, creating a conversation piece, learning something new, and maybe even reducing your impact along the way.

So here, the Moveline team has put together a handful of recommendations for instruction on repurposing common items into awesome home goods and furnishings.

Instructables

Perhaps the single greatest resource online for big, bold DIY projects (and little ones, too), Instructables gives step-by-step guidance on everything from cool papercraft decor to a pinball machine desk. They’re viewed as such experts in the field of creative reuse that they’ve partnered with the likes of Radio Shack and Home Depot. So, you could easily call this your singular one-stop-shop for ideas and how-tos when it comes to sprucing up your space.

BoredPanda

Few folks are bigger experts at killing time (and, obviously, boredom) than the ones behind BoredPanda.com. So it makes sense that they’d have rounded up some of the coolest, most inventive upcycling projects in existence and shared them on the web. Take a gander here at everything from a shelving system made of folding chairs to a lamp made of plastic spoons.

Apartment Therapy

Ever a treasure trove of ideas for inspired small-space and apartment living, Apartment Therapy occasionally does roundups of all its articles covering a particular topic, like this one linking to 49 posts on creative reuse projects. Lots of inspiration can be found in the site’s green living section as well.

Brit.co

For super-simple decorative elements, there’s no better place to go than Brit.co. This UT Austin alumna and former Google employee is setting herself up to be the next Martha Stewart, only with easily accessible materials and a far funkier, millennial-friendly aesthetic this time around. A gold-dipped lightbulb chandelier, copper-piped side table or pimped-out ribbon hammock? All can be yours with a few raw materials and a little elbow grease.

Pinterest

Sure, we mentioned Pinterest fails above, but life is meant to be lived, right? DIY furniture projects aren’t for the weak of spirit, so do a little research around your object of choice and combine tips from different sites if you have to, but know that a little ingenuity and perseverance can go a long way. You might even get a sweet coffee table out of the deal.

And when it comes to pulling together some cash for those finishing touches, like paint, glue and hardware? If you’re moving into a new space, Moveline can’t help you make furniture for it, but we can help you save money by comparing movers on your behalf, helping you select the right one and guaranteeing your price with zero surprises at the other end of the move. You might be on your own when it comes to building that bookshelf made of pipes, but you’re not alone in moving from one home to another. So, let us help. It’s why we’re here.

Here at Moveline, we get a lot of questions about a lot of things when it comes from moving from one place to another. A few include, “What’s a delivery spread?” “It’s cheaper to move myself instead of hire someone, right?” and “What in the world is valuation?” Here, we’ll tackle that last one to help you wade through the maze of moving industry terminology.

So, what is valuation? While it can feel confusing and complicated, it’s a fairly simple concept at heart. Let’s break it down.

Valuation = protection

The crew up on Capitol Hill requires that all Household Goods moves (that is, any move of household stuff, handled by a business) have a declared value attached to them. Now, declared value isn’t necessarily what these items are actually worth if they were sold. Some items would be tough to price accurately, and others have non-monetary value (heirlooms, for example). So the easier way to think about valuation or declared value is to think of it as a level of insurance or protection. If damage to the goods occurs, how much should the owners be reimbursed?

Because the value of many of our things is subjective, this declared valuation must be set prior to the move. After all, nobody wants to argue whether that busted lamp was “old” or “vintage” after the fact. So how do we develop an agreed-to declared value for an entire shipment? We’re glad you asked.

Released Value: $0.60 per pound

All shipments are required to be covered at a rate called “Released Value,” at no additional cost to you. That sounds good, except that this option gives new meaning to “minimum coverage.” Paying at a flat-rate of just $0.60 per pound, per item, if something breaks (unless it’s a cinder block) you’re not likely to get enough back to replace it. That three-pound, framed, limited-edition, signed print that got crushed? Here’s $1.80. That fifty-pound vintage guitar amplifier? If you can replace it for $30, you’re all set. What about the beautiful 200-pound leather couch you just bought for $1600? Under Released Value, you get a whopping $120. To us, that’s not sufficient.

Full Value Protection

This is exactly what you think it is: full-value coverage that costs more, but actually gives you a fair level of reimbursement should something happen to your things during shipping.

Moveline currently offers three options for Full Value Protection, based on the deductible amount–$250, $500, and $1000. In each plan, you get full replacement value of your things minus the selected deductible. So looking at that 200-pound leather couch again, that’s $1600 minus the deductible. Way better than $0.60 per pound.

It’s your choice (but it’s an easy one)

Obviously, since we work with only the best moving companies in the industry, every attempt is made to deliver your things safe and sound to your new home. But in reality, from time to time, life happens and damage or loss occurs.

Nobody likes it (least of all us), and that’s why we highly…HIGHLY recommend Full Value Protection for your move. In fact, for full-service moves, we include it by default in our pricing. You can choose to remove it, accepting only the free released value coverage, but unless you just enjoy taking unnecessary risks with your things, we strongly recommend against doing that.

Ultimately, it’s your property. And it’s your choice as to how to protect it, and at what level. If you have any questions, we’ll be happy to walk you through your options and help you make the best choice for you and your budget. Bottom line: if you’re planning a move, let Moveline help. It’s exactly what we’re here for.