Five Tips for Moving Out of an Apartment in Greater Boston

Moving out of an apartment in Greater Boston comes with a few jobs that most moving advice skips, since it’s written for people leaving a house.

You’ve got two leases to line up, and a landlord who walks through the apartment after you’re gone and expects it back the way you found it. Husky Moving already has a long list of moving day tips for the packing and the day itself, so this post sticks to the apartment side of things.

Line up your move with both leases. Before you book anything, compare the day your current lease ends with the day your new one starts. In the Greater Boston area, most leases end on August 30 or 31, and the new leases start on September 1. It’s very rare that you’ll be able to move in before the 1st unless the current tenant moves out early, so if you can’t move in sooner, you’ll need a plan for storage.

We’ve seen renters rent a moving truck for a few days, park it near the new apartment and keep their things in it overnight. Husky Moving can also store your things overnight on a locked truck at their discretion, and for anything longer you’re looking at a storage unit. Their storage page has a guide to picking the right size, and if you’re going that route, it’s worth reading how to prepare your items for storage so nothing comes out damaged.

If it works the other way and the new lease starts first, use the overlap. A few days with keys to both places means you can move in stages and still have time to deal with the old apartment once it’s empty.

And if you haven’t found your next place yet, you can browse Boston apartments on

SpotEasy, where agents are verified before they can post.

Rent crates instead of buying cardboard.

Renting plastic crates is easier than buying cardboard for most apartment moves. Cardboard boxes are fine, but they take more time and effort to get, and they need a lot

of tape to put together. Stacking them is harder too, because you have to factor in the

weight. Then when you’re done, you have a large stack of flat cardboard boxes to get rid of.

Husky Moving rents heavy plastic moving crates instead. They drop them off, you pack, and they pick them up once you’ve unpacked. The lids are attached, so there’s no tape, and the crates stack five high, which helps a lot when you’re moving out of a small apartment and need to keep a path clear to the door. If you’re staying local around Arlington, the crates can come with you.

When renters ask for an apartment’s measurements, they almost always forget to get the measurements for the doors, stairwells and elevators leading up to it. We’ve seen many cases where the furniture technically fit in the unit, but it didn’t fit up a steep

stairwell, especially in the older buildings in Back Bay and Fenway. So a good tip is to check the measurements of the doors and ask how wide the stairwell is. If there’s an elevator, always check that it’s large enough. Do the same at the place you’re leaving. Husky’s guide on how to prepare a floor plan for the movers walks

through it.

A lot of furniture comes apart, like bed frames and couches with removable legs. Husky

does assembly and disassembly at their hourly rate, so if you know a piece will need to

be taken apart, mention it when you book so they can plan the time.

Don’t leave anything behind for the landlord

Anything you leave in the apartment becomes your landlord’s problem, and a landlord

who has to pay someone to haul it away is going to try to get that money back from you.

That includes the stuff people forget about, like an old dresser in the basement or a bike

in the back hall.

Start sorting a few weeks out. Some of it can go in a moving sale, and Husky’s list of

things to throw away before moving is a good gut check for what isn’t worth packing. Husky’s tips page also covers scheduling a donation pickup.

For whatever’s left, Husky can take it. For a few pieces they’ll quote a price on the spot,

and bigger loads go to the Winchester Transfer Station. They can’t take chemicals, so plan for those separately.

Take down what you put up. If you mounted a TV, hung shelves, put up curtain rods or added hooks anywhere, decide what to do with them before the walk-through. Some landlords are happy to keep a curtain rod, and others want the walls back the way they were, so ask yours before you start pulling things down. Whatever comes down, patch the screw holes, and only touch up the paint if you have the exact color, because a patch in the wrong color can look worse than the hole.

Husky Moving does handyman work too, like mounting TVs and hanging shelves, so

they can take those things down and patch the wall while they’re already there for the

move. Once it’s done, take a few photos of the empty rooms so you have a record of

how you left them.

Before you hand back the keys, cover the basics too: give your landlord your notice in

writing, set up your utilities at the new place, return every key and leave a forwarding

address. If you’re moving out of an apartment around Arlington and want a hand with any of this, you can reach out to Husky or any of the many great local companies.

• Greg L. From SpotEasy