Moving? Consider PODS Storage Units

My husband recently accepted a position for a company that was not within commuting distance from our home. We found ourselves in need of not only selling our home, but packing up our belongings and buying and moving into a new home as well. Everything happened so quickly. In a market where homes were taking an average of six months to sell, ours took only two weeks. The prospective buyers wanted to move into our house in 30 days. We had to move out. And fast.

We found a home to move into. We were incredibly fortunate but our closing date for our new home was a week after our closing date for our old home so that would make moving directly in an issue. We needed a moving alternative that met our needs. We looked into movers. We could hire them to help us move out of our house, but then where would we take our belongings? To a storage facility, probably.

But what a pain that process seemed to be...move out of our home, our belongings into a storage facility, hire new movers to get our belongings from said storage facility and then move them into our new home. I know that moving is a lot of work, but we wanted to ease our load as much as possible and this just didn't seem like the best alternative.

Back to the drawing board. We could move ourselves. Get a bunch of friends and piece-by-piece move our belongings into a storage facility. This would save a ton on money, but we dismissed this alternative almost as soon as we suggested it. We had way too much to burden friends with this task.

Then my husband heard of PODS. A large truck comes to your home and drops off a POD. There are a couple different sizes that you can choose from, of course, the larger sizes costing more money. They place the POD where you ask them to and they leave it there for you to fill. So, with this option, we were able to slowly move our belongings in. Day by day we would pack up boxes and then place those boxes into the POD. We ordered two, but we asked for the second POD to come only a few days before we were due to move.

This way, we were able to instill the help of a few friends and move all our last-minute belongings...couches, television, my toddlers toys, beds. When you are done, you call the POD customer service and tell them what day you would like them to pick up your PODS.

For us, it was the day before we closed on our home. They then take the PODS to a storage facility closest to where you are moving to. So, for us, they took the PODS to their storage facility in Southern NH and on our chosen date, the day we closed on our new home, they took the PODS there. And wallah...all our belongings ready for us to unload.

A recap: Tell PODS customer service how many you want, what size, and when to drop them off. Then tell them when to pick them up and where they'll be moving them to. PODS go to a storage facility for however long you need them there, and then you tell them what day they need to be dropped off and where. For us, this was the best solution to our moving needs.

You pay for a POD by the month and if you order three PODS, for example, but only need two, you can cancel the third and not be charged for it. For more information, visit www.pods.com or call 866-229-4120.

You can then research different sizes and different costs. To give you an idea, we chose the larger sizes and it cost us approximately $900 a month for each POD. We had a three-story home that was filled with a lot of belongings and most of our belongings fit into two PODS. Customer service was wonderful and we never once had an issue that was not resolved. Next time you're in the market to move, consider PODS. They were a fairly easy moving alternative.