The One Thing All Your Smartest Friends Remember to Do When Moving
I have a cautionary moving tale for you that (thankfully) didn’t happen to me. My roommate recently came across a gorgeous two-piece sectional at the West Elm Outlet for $300—this isn’t necessarily vital information to my story, but I know my audience and you will appreciate that bargain! Back at the apartment, we had an ugly but oh-so-comfortable couch that we were eagerly looking to replace, so so we bought the sectional, put the ugly couch up on Facebook Marketplace for $50 and waited for a buyer.
It didn’t take long for someone to bite (hot tip: Facebook Marketplace is the new Craigslist!), and our buyer sent a moving crew to pick it up. In a couple of pivots, that ugly couch was out of my life and our new sectional was cozily placed in our corner, ready to support me through my “Mad Men” binges.
But, hey, not so fast, Liz! Only a few hours later, the buyer had messaged me, asking if there was anyone else who was interested in the couch. She quickly assured me that there was nothing wrong with the couch—well, except for one pretty big thing: It wouldn’t fit through her door!
For those wondering, she had asked for measurements for the couch (and we had given them to her—including the legs, which is actually something people forget to measure). But her fatal flaw? She didn’t measure the door frame.
As we enter one of the busiest moving weekends of the year, I come to you with a plea. Take this cautionary tale, my dear friends, and do as my smartest friends do: Measure your door frames! Though this is the most recent example I have of someone making this mistake, it’s not the only time it’s happened. I know people who have paid hundreds of dollars for a couch to be delivered, only to have to pay an additional hundred dollars in return fees because it was too puffy for their small door frame. This is such a common problem that there are new furniture companies, like Burrow, that actually have designed modular couches in-a-box that will fit even the smallest of door frames! But if you’re inheriting a couch (or are buying a more traditional set-up), save yourself the trouble and quickly measure the width and the height of your door frames (and if you wince just thinking about how a tape measure could snap back on ya, get yourself a digital measurer!)
Updated August 9, 2019 —LS
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