Well, my wife and I are now moved into our new home in Green Bay, though we are hardly unpacked or settled in. But I thought I'd do a quick post to show off a pic of the new house, and to share some thoughts on staying Green while moving.
Our house is a chateau-style home built in 1928, and beautifully renovated top to bottom (see pic).
We moved from a slightly larger house near Madison, so we had to get rid of a lot of stuff. The whole experience gave me a few ideas about being Green while moving:
* See if your moving company can supply you with lightly used boxes. Ours (a Mayflower agent) was able to, at no extra cost to their price, and another Mayflower agent here in Green Bay is picking up the used boxes. The ones that are fried will get recycled, but those that are still strong could be reused by other clients. (I still ended up buying some new boxes, but at least with most boxes I was re-using, not just consuming.)
* This is pretty obvious, but think about giving away furniture, toys, clothes you don't need to charities and take a deduction, unless you have enough to hold a serious garage sale. I ended up giving some nice furniture to Saint Vincent DePaul. They came to pick it up. Trouble is, we had planned to give it to some relatives back in the Madison area, but couldn't pull that off before we moved, so we ended up moving it here, then giving it away. That's a waste in transport costs, but the important point is that charity stores like SVDP will come get your furniture at no charge. Better to give it to charity if you know it's probably going to end up in the corner of your basement, or tucked in a storage space.
* Properly dispose of old computers and electronics. I had to pay $20 to get rid of my old Mac & monitor from 1992. It served me well back in the day, and was still running, but obsolete. Too bad things aren't like in Europe, where the European Union has a law called the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive that puts the onus on manufacturers to fund a low-cost infrastructure for electronic waste recycling. Old computers and electronics have some nasty chemicals, including lead and cadmium. It's more efficient if manufacturers think ahead about the cost of disposal, and jointly invest in an infrastructure for recycling and disposal. Here, consumers have to each shell out $10 or $15 bucks per old product, and drive to a special site and pay for a sticker. It makes it all too tempting to just chuck it in the regular trash, and those chemicals end up in a landfill.
* If you have to move on a real cold day in November like me, you might as well turn the heat off or way down while the movers have the doors open. No sense in heating your front yard.
*When you view your new house prior to move in, make note of the types and wattage of bulbs used. Then you can have the right CFL bulbs on hand for when you first move in, at least for some of the more commonly used fixtures in high traffic areas. As a side note, it's helpful to store surge bars and a few extension cords and bulbs in a clearly marked box, because those end up being needed right away.
* A neighbor in the Madison area who had seen my for sale sign very graciously stopped by and gave me a box full of used bubble wrap. None of my new neighbors seem to be selling or packing to move, so I'm disposing of my used wrap as solid waste, but at least some of it was reused.
There are probably better Green moving tips out there, but that's a few things that popped into my head. Back to un-packing now, and to anyone reading this in Green Bay--go Bears!