After months of laziness deliberation, I finally signed the papers on a new apartment in Manhattan last week.

Why? Because living in Larchmont was about as fun as playing two-square with a registered sex offender.
Anywho, I had found this NYC place months ago but didn’t really understand until now why it took me so long to sign a lease.

In 2007, I moved from Akron, OH to Washington DC to Alexandria, VA to Larchmont, NY. I lived in four places in one year.

Since 2003, I’ve moved to nine different apartments and each move has been about as enjoyable as sticking my foot into a rusty wood chipper.

But now, I consider myself an expert on moving you fellow hipsters are considering packing up shop too.

There are thousands of good sites out there for finding a good apartment, so I won’t get into that. But now that Google Maps has Street View built in, you can quickly get a feel if your potential apartment is in a sketchy neighborhood without the hassle of visiting it. Just punch an address into Google Maps and see if the street view option is available (it is in most metro cities, and just about all of Westchester).

You can get cheap storage boxes at U-Haul for $5-10 bucks. For my clothes, I got a bunch of U-Haul wardrobe boxes that have built in metalic rods that act like portable closets. So I basically packed up my entire closet in 10 minutes without having to take anything off hangers.

You can also score some large boxes for free by slick talking managers at grocery stores. Most stores have a “policy” of not giving out boxes to customers, but it’s total B.S. because they don’t keep inventory of boxes.

You can easily sway them by arguing “Hey, you’re going to be throwing them out anyway, I’m just helping you guys out with less trash to take care of.”

If they still don’t allow you to take the boxes, say “Well, I am going to go outside and take those boxes. If what I am doing is illegal, please call the police on me.”

I’ve done that a couple of times too and it works like a charm. Seriously.

If you’re thinking about hiring a mover, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll get ripped off by the guys in the phone book. Any business that is named after the number of men and trucks they have is out to hustle you. They’ll claim that they’re something cheap like $50-70 bucks an hour, but then they’ll add in a truck fee, utility fee and charge you mileage and the number of stairs they have to go up (even if there’s an elevator in some cases).

Your best bet is going to UShip. It works like EBay. You post what you need to move and when, and moving companies bid on it. You can see the bidder’s rating history to see if they’re reputable or not too. You get movers to agree to a price that’s comfortable to you and you never have to worry about secret fees.

When I moved to New York, I got a guy to move everything in my apartment in Virginia for $95. Yes, $95.

By the way, if you’re hiring a mover to transport your stuff, don’t waste time emptying out dresser drawers and cabinets. Why pack stuff that’s just going to be emptied back into the drawers anyway? Just wrap some tape around that sucker and the movers will carry them.

You can rent a U-Haul truck if you want and move everything yourself, but if you have a lot of stuff, its worth paying a couple bucks extra and have someone do it instead. Especially if you’re as lazy as me.

(Photos by Tom Nycz / The Journal News )