3D Elastic Storage

If all goes according to plan we’ll close the sale of our house on August 27th and begin meandering across the country, visiting friends and relatives enroute to Santa Rosa. We’ve thrown all the cards up into the air. When we arrive we’ll look for an apartment in which to live for a year while we scope out the region. And we’ll look for a studio for Luann. Conventional movers aren’t set up for what we need to do: ship to storage, then retrieve from storage to several locations at different times. We got a few estimates just to see, they were astronomical, a PODS-style solution was clearly in order.

I spoke to a PODS representative who was so rude that I immediately began checking out the competition. United/Mayflower offers the kind of service we need, but they only use one container size, 8′ x 8′ x 16′. One wouldn’t be enough, two would be overkill. Also they don’t ship to Santa Rosa, so that was the end of that. I did appreciate their comparison between PODS and United/Mayflower containers. Both are nominally 8 x 8 x 16 but they’re right about those interior beams. As I learned when helping friends load a PODS container, they really get in the way.

Next I talked to U-Pack and, unless the response to this blog post reveals an alternative I haven’t considered, we’re going with them. Their elastic storage service had me at hello. Like United/Mayflower they only offer one size of container. But their “ReloCubes” are smaller: 6’3L” x 7’W x 8’4″H. I like that for a couple of reasons. It gives us more flexibility to divide the load into separate deliveries. And I think the smaller containers will be easier to pack well.

How many will we need? There’s no penalty for overestimating, but these are big boxes and we don’t want more in our driveway than necessary. So I want to measure the volume of our load as well as I can. There’s an online estimator but it’s geared toward a conventional household. In our case, more than half the load is Luann’s studio and it’s, well, take the tour and see for yourself. It’s more than an artist’s workspace, it’s really a museum of wonders. When she opens the studio to visitors people spend hours wandering around opening drawers and looking at collections of beads, rubber stamps, fabric, yarn, antique boxes, old tools, globes, maps, dolls. We can’t take everything but these collections are central to what Luann does and we need to recreate them as best we can.

The most generic feature of the U-Pack estimator is the Boxes section. You can enter a number for each of the four standard sizes: small (1.5 cubic feet), medium (3), large (4.5), and extra large (6). I picked up a few of each at Home Depot, assembled them, and begin using them as cubic measuring sticks.

A stack of printer’s type trays = 1 small

Six antique drawers = 1 medium

A lot of stuff like this will just get wrapped and taped. It doesn’t need to be in a box, we just need to know how many box-equivalents of space it’ll consume.

Three vintage suitcases = 1 medium

Luann has a whole collection of vintage suitcases. Now that I’ve accounted for their volume, we can fill ’em up.

ProPanels = 2 extra large

These boxes hold the ProPanels that form the walls of Luann’s booth at shows.

Booth floor = 1.5 extra large

These interlock to form the floor of her booth. Now that we’ve accounted for the volume, we can use them in various configurations to fill space as we pack.

Two shipping boxes = 2 extra large

These were used when she traveled to shows in Philadelphia and Baltimore. They’re perfect for shipping her collection of, wait for it, beaver-chewed sticks.

Box of antlers = 1 extra large

Admit it, this is cool.

I like this method so much that I’m now using it to estimate the household part of the move. It’s far less complex because we’re taking very little. The stuff in the studio is unique and special. The stuff in the house, for the most part, isn’t. We like funky second-hand sofas and chairs, but it doesn’t make sense to transport bulky items like that so we’re unloading most of them and Luann can enjoy reacquiring on the other end.

The U-Pack estimator lists all kinds of household items but in a generic way. How many cubic feet does your bed or chair or small dresser really occupy? I’m measuring in terms of box equivalents. Tonight I’ll compile the data, tomorrow I’ll call up U-Pack to reserve containers, when they arrive we’ll find out how well my method worked.