One of the biggest headaches of moving is furniture relocation. No matter how highly recommended a removalist company is, somehow, something always breaks and then the hassle of getting compensation back from insurance is ridiculously tedious. Having moved several times around Australian and Asian cities, the idea of packing furniture and breakables still fill me with dread. It’s not as simple as stockpiling on newspapers and bubble wrap, the whole process involves a fair bit of organisation so that you know where whatever is at any given time. I guess the good thing about furniture is that however you wrap a chair, it will be fairly obvious that it is a chair even cocooned in bubble wrap.
My Relocation from Kyoto to Melbourne
I have fond memories of moving from Sendai to Kyoto in Japan. My work paid for the removalists and also threw in the packing service. So on the big day, there were 4 gentlemen who showed up right at the appointed time. None of that “between 8am and 12 midday” crap we get with couriers here in Australia. In fact, some of them don’t even bother to show up. They said 8am and they were at the door at 8am. But then this was Japan, people and trains show up on time and within the minute they say. Even courier delivery companies give you the option of two hour windows instead of the all-day wait they give us here in Australia. It’s not like we all work from home and are happy to be in a DHL-imposed house arrest. So these guys…they walked in and out of my 3 bedroom apartment in Kyoto while removing their shoes just at the door. They were fast and despite having 8 shoes, these guys were able to glide in and out knowing which shoe is theirs. It was unbelievable!
My partner and I have packed the smaller items but really had left the bigger items like the dining table, chairs, bed frame (yes, we had one that was given to us), fridge, TV, etc. So in come two guys with this gigantic roll of bubble wrap and another two guys with a roll of paper. This is not just ordinary paper. It’s two sheets of smooth brown packing paper sandwiching several layers of facial tissues. I’m sure they weren’t facial tissues because I don’t know anyone with a face that big. But there it is. The paper wrapped everything. Legs of the table, back of the chairs and they all worked in a frenzied but organised pace. After everything we owned looked beige, the bubble wrap went on. These guys took the same amount of time to wrap up 4 chairs as we did wrapping up a crockery set for 2. Slight exaggeration but they were fast and our furniture were safe.
On their way out, they had a special smooth, sturdy high tech invention that went between the furniture and the door frame if they feel the item is too big to go through. Ok, it might have just been an oversized plastic spatula of some sort but it served its purpose and nothing was damaged when we unwrapped everything in Kyoto. I kept a few sheets of those paper-tissue wrapping paper and re-used them twice more when we moved to Melbourne. Even if they were ripped on certain places, they were still very handy.
The point of this is that when obtaining the services of relocators, it is highly recommended to get insurance. I’ve had a year old fridge and washing machine dinged by “experts” and I had no recourse to get them to reimburse for the damages. I was moving houses within Melbourne and the houses were only 1.8 kms apart. What could possibly go wrong in under 2 kms? Regrettable words on hindsight.
