Usually, moving into a new home is not an easy task. An even harder one is moving out of the old one. Why? Well, you have to pack, for one. Let’s remember our last vacation, when we had to pack our bags. Moving is fairly similar only on a larger scale and with more headaches. Not to mention the costs. Here are a few tips for when you move both to make it easier and cheaper.

1. If you look on the spending side, it’s easier, cheaper and more useful and fun to pay your friends in a night out or a night in with beer and pizza, to help you move your stuff, then paying a moving company, whose employees you don’t know, to move your stuff. I’m not talking furniture, fridge, washing machine. I’m talking clothes, sheets, kitchenware and so on.

2. Every piece of furniture and cavities must be filled. If you hire a moving company to move your stuff, be a jerk and leave your clothes inside the furniture. Fill the washing machine. Put your kitchenware into bags in a trash container.

3. Look around stores for free large size boxes. I’m not telling you to look in the garbage, but big stores like shoe stores, appliance stores are a great place to find huge cardboard boxes: TVs, washing machines, dish washers, refrigerators, are stored in huge boxes that get thrown away once displayed in a store.

4. Before you move, start getting rid of unwanted things. Think what you have in your new home. If you don’t have a garden, give away your gardening tools. No use keeping unwanted or useless stuff.

5. Don’t get cheap on insurance with a moving company. Also be very careful who you’re dealing with.

6. Don’t leave empty spaces in boxes. If a box is only half full of items, use stuffed animals, bed sheets, pillows to fill the empty spaces. Use up all the space at your disposal. You won’t get away without a general cleaning anyway.