5 extremely handy apps that helped me while moving houses

Over the past month, my husband and I have been going through the dreaded house move experience. We’d only gone through a couple of moves before in our entire lives, but this one was bound to be the toughest. 40+ large boxes, 70-90 minutes apart by train, no personal car to help with the back-and-forths while the new place is getting ready, a couple of furniture pieces — really, it was all a recipe for frustration. But we turned to five very handy Android apps to help us through it all.

Since we live in France, I used some local services, but I will mention the US equivalent in each case. These should technically be available in many countries, too, but under different names. I suggest asking Gemini or ChatGPT, “What’s the equivalent to X in my country?” to get the name of the service if you don’t know what it is.

Since we were moving out of a fully furnished apartment, we didn’t have a lot of furniture in our name except two Ikea storage cabinets, my desk, and my office chair. Everything else could go in boxes or travel suitcases. But since we didn’t have a car, the first thing we obviously needed was a truck and someone to help us with the move.

There are many specialized moving companies in France and the US, but the rates are exorbitant and not really suited for a relatively small move like ours with no big furniture pieces. So I turned to Yoojo, a task provider platform that links handymen with people who have no idea what they’re doing (i.e. us), similar to TaskRabbit in the US.

I posted my request, got dozens of quotes, found the one I liked the most based on his price, previous reviews, and equipment, and hired him. The day of the move, he arrived on time, had a big truck, a hand truck to help carry everything, and he did his job perfectly.

I also turned to Yoojo once again a week later when I noticed that the lawn in our new place had grown too tall and was in desperate need of mowing. Since we have yet to buy a lawnmower (and it’d be silly to get one before Black Friday), I just posted a new request for lawnmowing and found someone to help with it. This is our first time living in a place with an outdoor garden and lawn, so until we figure out how to take care of it and buy the necessary equipment, it’ll be nice to know that we can turn to someone who knows what they’re doing to help us.

We’re used to daily cleaning and maintenance for our home, but we knew our cleaning skills — and exhaustion — would be put to the test during these two weeks. For one, we had to fully clean our old apartment after all the dusty boxes were gone to make sure we got our full deposit back. For two, there was a small renovation in our new place, which caused the entire house, literally, to be dusty.

After struggling against accumulating dust for a few days and trying to do our best to clean, wipe, and scrub the main surfaces, we decided it was time to call up someone who had the skills to handle it all. For one, I really wanted my full deposit, and for two, I’m at a point in my life where I know health and time are invaluable, so I was willing to part with a few euros to offload this task.

I could’ve gone to Yoojo too, but there’s a better-specialized cleaning service here in France called Wecasa (the equivalent in the US would be TaskRabbit or Handy) that allows me to automatically apply a deductible to my taxes, so I used it to get certified cleaners for both places. In just a few hours each, they were able to handle all of the dust and dirt from every nook, corner, skirting board, and more. Money well spent.

When packing up everything you own, you’re bound to run into items you don’t need anymore. So why bother transporting them to your shiny new place when you know they’ll sit in some box or on some shelf and never be used?

I used this opportunity to donate some perfumes we can no longer use (my allergic cough starts immediately the moment someone sprays anything next to me) and a big unicorn plush my husband received as a Secret Santa gift/prank. I also sold some unused items like a Chromecast since my Google TV Streamer replaced it.

For all of that, the easiest place to go is Facebook’s Marketplace — it’s actually the only reason I keep a Facebook account active. I also turned to the local Leboncoin because it offers secure transactions and simplifies the sale process for both seller and buyer.

Despite our best efforts to cook homemade meals during the move, there was about a week where we just couldn’t make it happen. Our kitchen gear was in boxes for a couple of days before/during the move, and we had to wait a few extra days for the renovation to be done before cleaning and using our kitchen in the new place.

The easy answer was to open the local Deliveroo app — DoorDash if you’re in the US — and find nearby restaurants and fast food joints with some buy-one-get-one offers to deliver food. Some Korean kimchi jeon, some sushi, some curry and rice, and yes, a pizza once to tide us over until we were back in business and cookin’ up in our new kitchen.

Yes, we did hire a mover, and we used public transport (busses and trains) to commute back and forth for nearly two weeks while the small renovation was ongoing, but there were still a couple of instances where we just had to grab a Bolt or an Uber.

The first time it happened, we were a few seconds late to the bus after an exhaustingly long day, and the wait time for the next one was 23 minutes. It was an easy decision to pull up Uber and get a taxi to drop us at the train station, about two kilometers away.

The second time, we had a last-minute change in our renovation that required us to get new tiles. On a Sunday. Our contractor offered some options he had on hand, but none were nice enough, so we headed to Leroy Merlin (the French equivalent of Home Depot) and found some nice tiles. We’d gone by public transit, but there was no way we were carrying out 80 Kg (176 pounds) worth of super large tiles on a train or bus or by foot. Uber to the rescue! We just made sure the driver approved of the transport before he arrived.

No matter how much you prepare for a move, you will end up with some essential purchases to make at the last minute. Extra packing boxes or bubble wrap, a new lock and key for the new place, a handheld vacuum to clean up some spots while the renovation is ongoing, an extra water filtering bottle to be able to drink in the new place, proper support for the washer and dryer to be able to move them around, and so on.

For all of those, it was just so easy and so convenient to pull up Amazon, do some research, buy the item we needed, and get it delivered the next day. It was a boon for our last-minute “Shit, we need this!” moments.

Now, I’m just relieved this whole ordeal is over. This was my and my husband’s most complicated move in our whole lives and we should be staying put here for a while, hopefully. But I know there’s an arsenal of services and apps that are just at my fingertips if I ever (no, no, no, never, I’m never doing this again!) have to do this again.