Plastic bins: better than boxes

I associate a lot of things with moving—stress; cursing the landlord for raising the rent. But mostly, I think of cardboard boxes—large; small; half-open boxes that sat in my new home for weeks until I found a place to put all my stuff; and finally, once those boxes were Break down and piles of cardboard will await recycling day.

After I decided to move late last year, I braced myself for another box apocalypse. When I complained about this in a group chat, a friend asked, “Have you ever considered renting plastic bins?”

Over the past decade or so, plastic bins have emerged as an alternative to cardboard boxes. They are reusable, waterproof, and stronger than the heavy-duty cardboard. Since they are stackable, they also take up less space.

You can buy your own dumpsters or rent them. If you buy them, they’ll make attractive candidates for QR code action tags, which you can scan with your phone to see a photo or inventory list of the bin’s contents. If you rent them, a set of dumpsters will be delivered to your home so you can pack up your life and move. In a few weeks, the bins will be removed from your new home.

If you are like me and plan on renting a dumpster, you actually need to do a lot of research. Here are some things I need to consider before starting a dumpster move.

First: Do you hire movers or do everything yourself? If it’s the former, it’s much more convenient (albeit more expensive) to find a moving company that offers dumpster rentals and handles the move for you. But if you rent a U-Haul and enlist the help of friends and family, you may find it easier to choose a dumpster rental company that only rents dumpsters. This way, there’s no need to worry about being upsold on additional moving services.

Prices vary based on the number of dumpsters you rent and whether you choose a service bundle. That said, the average cost per dumpster tends to be between $5 and $6, not including tax.

In my case, I was crossing state lines and while all the companies I checked would drop off the bins for free, some would not pick up the bins from my new home. I either had to pay the extra pickup fee and drop them off myself, or find a company that serviced both my new neighborhood and my old neighborhood. I just moved across the border from New York to New Jersey, but even then I had to cross a lot of companies off my list.

In the end, even though I had to pay extra for crossing the state line and the stairs to my new home, I got a good price: $5 each time, or $150 total for 30 dumpsters.

You will also need to confirm the rental period. Some companies have strict windows and won’t let you extend it. Some offer free extensions, while others charge a fee.

You also need to check if you have a minimum number of bins must rent. I want to order dumpsters a la carte, but can only find one company in my area that will do that – as long as I rent at least 15 of them.

Most companies offer tags, ties, delivery and pickup, and various sizes of bins. But if you rent a dumpster from a moving company, there is no guarantee that they will move it to your home for free. The few companies I researched only moved the bins to the first floor – apartments with multiple floors and no elevators required an additional fee. I moved into a four-story townhouse with per-floor rates. We ended up paying a fee to have the movers dump all the bins into the second floor living room, then driving the aerobics ourselves to remove the bins destined for the third and fourth floors.

Bins are also considered a more sustainable option than cardboard boxes because they are reusable and produce less waste. Bloomberg Residential cardboard recycling lags far behind corporate recycling, partly due to the boom in e-commerce, the report said. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that 56% of paper and cardboard waste ends up in landfills, while only 38% of cardboard is actually recycled. Even though that number makes me cringe, I can’t deny that breaking cardboard boxes is one of my most hated weekly chores.

Packing boxes are not that different from boxes, although there are a few quirks.

In past moves, I have preferred smaller boxes to store heavy or fragile items. However, the company I went to only offered one size of litter box: large. (Others offer medium and large dumpsters.) Fortunately, this didn’t end up being a big problem. I just need to be more strategic with my weight distribution. With the addition of some towels and t-shirts for padding, my breakable belongings made the move intact.

Since the bins have interlocking and stackable lids, you don’t have to use tape to close them. When I finish packing one bin, I stack it neatly on top of another, saving space in my tiny New York City apartment. Plastic is waterproof – no one likes moving on a rainy day, but wet cardboard can make it worse.

On the other hand, keep in mind that these dumpsters will undergo multiple moves. While the inside was clean, the outside of my bin was covered in black marker with the name of the room scrawled in various handwritings. One box contains the contents of one person’s kitchen, another person’s living room, and another person’s bedroom. The bins still had the remnants of moving tags that others had torn off, leaving me with little space to write down the room where the bins would be placed. mine move. This means they are not a good choice for QR tags, which is disappointing.

What really sold me on using litter boxes is that they have a time limit: you have to return them after two weeks. It was the fastest unpacking job I’ve ever had. Although it was stressful, I had been moving for a week and was 90% done when the delivery guy came to pick up all 30 bins. This helped me relax into my new home faster.

Plastic bins may not be for everyone, but you won’t be seeing me moving with cardboard boxes anytime soon. Switching to dumpsters makes moving less of the nightmare it once was. The added convenience—and the fact that I’ve been moving four months without a single cardboard box in sight—is well worth it.