This App Is the Safest, Smartest Way to Move Furniture (and It’s Perfect for Vintage Shopping)

updated Sep 3, 2020
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Credit: Sarah Lyon

Most people who know me well are pretty clued into my obsession with vintage home decor shopping. I love to scour sites like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for the best secondhand deals. That said, I also live in a city (Washington, DC, to be exact) and don’t have a car—not to mention a driver’s license. So what’s a motivated vintage furniture lover to do?

Generally, I’m able to take public transportation or use a rideshare service to pick up smaller items, and you can always ask a seller if they’re willing to deliver for a few extra bucks, too. There are cases when I stumble across the perfect item, though, and that particular thing just so happens to be a bit too heavy or bulky to fit into the average SUV. Other times, something is located too far away for me to justify the cost of Ubering there and back, especially when I then will have to figure out how to haul that big item into my apartment by myself.

Well, Bungii is now coming to my rescue, and it can up your vintage shopping game, too! I first began using this app earlier this year when a woman that I was buying a dresser from suggested it as an affordable option for transporting large pieces of furniture. Ever since, I’ve been hooked! Basically, Bungii functions just like a rideshare app, but it’s explicitly for moving furniture, and the best part is you don’t need to physically be present for the move itself (though someone should be home on the receiving end of your drop-off).

Earlier this summer, I relied on two Bungii workers to safely transport my faux fireplace mantel back to my apartment after picking it up from the seller’s home, which was about 45 minutes away from me. I informed the seller that I would be hiring two movers to pick up the piece, so I would need to pay her ahead of time and told her I would contact her when they were about five minutes away from her place. That was it!

On the day of the pickup, she let the movers inside and watched as they loaded the various mantel components into their truck, all while I was able to monitor the pick-up’s status on the app. I tracked their journey back to my apartment in DC, instructed them park out back behind my building, and then told them where in my apartment I wanted the mantel to be placed. The movers were friendly (one I happened to have used before to move a coffee table!), wore masks due to COVID-19 regulations, and were efficient unloading the item, spending less than 10 minutes total inside my apartment. The woman who sold me the mantel was so impressed with the service on her end that she has since started using Bungii herself.

Bungii currently operates in a handful of cities and metro areas across the U.S., from Kansas City to Nashville and as far north as Boston. Prices vary depending on the amount of items being moved, their size, and the length of the journey. One can opt to hire a single Bungii mover (which starts at about $49 in DC) or two at a time (starting at about $99 in my area). If you hire a single mover and an item ends up being heavier than anticipated, you may need to step in to assist. So if you’re unable or unwilling to lift furniture, you may want to opt for two workers just to be safe.

I felt like I really made the most of the service when I purchased an item located in another Bungii-operated city (Baltimore) and had it brought to me in DC within a just a few hours of discovering the piece on Facebook Marketplace. I’m all for efficiency, and this app makes it easy for an impatient re-arranger like me to transform my place without having to leave the house! Better yet, I can now expand my secondhand search radius to discover all of the amazing goodies listed within my area and beyond, relatively stress-free. Time is of the essence when it comes to vintage shopping, so knowing you can dispatch movers within a few hours’ notice to get something is a great advantage, particularly if your own schedule or transportation situation isn’t super flexible.