Today I'm going to share my experience on how people prepare for the moving day. Having worked in the industry for several years, and having done the actual moving in Montreal myself for a couple of seasons, I have seen all kinds from horrible to excellent.

Do not leave anything hanging loose. If you do, it will take longer and shows that you don't care about two things: the money and the condition in which it will arrive.
If you don't care, movers will not either, so take your time to prepare well.

Let us try to make it short and sweet.

You have to get different size boxes, scotch with gun, shrink and bubble wrap, a roll of brown paper, and high quality, thick garbage bags.

Empty all drawers and pack clothes in garbage bags or suitcases. Pack breakables in boxes with generous amounts of brown paper or cloth in between. Make sure to mark "fragile" where needed.

If you have "IKEA" type furniture disassemble it, bundle the pieces of similar size and shape and attach them together with tape. If you cannot disassemble yourself, ask your movers to do it, it might cost you a bit more, but they are usually pretty efficient at doing this so it will be an extra 5-10 minutes for them.

Make sure you ask movers to shrink wrap any furniture that is particularly sensitive to scratches. Glass pieces, such as mirror or shelves should be wrapped in cloth and shrinkwrapped or taped over.

Important: Heavy items in small boxes and light items in big boxes.

The move goes way faster if heavy items are in small boxes. There is nothing worse than a huge suitcase full of books. The weight of each item should be distributed in a homogeneous way both for safety of your belongings and for loading efficiency.

Reserve your elevator and a parking spot in both locations

Reserving the elevator will accelerate the process by at least 30% so do it even if you only have a small studio.

Reserving parking spaces on Montreal street can be done in two ways: getting a 1 day license from the city of Montreal or putting out two chairs with a piece of rope and a banner that says "déménagement". It really is the customer's call to choose which way it is done. Getting a license will cost around $100 so the vast majority simply do not reserve their space. I would obviously recommend to do it the legal way and if someone asks, I never told you about the chairs.

My only suggestion on this one is be careful if your street is very narrow. This is especially true if you live on a street where a car barely passes and you always see hanging mirrors on the cars of those too lazy to fold them. The point is, if the movers have to walk half a block with each item, it might cost you a couple of hundreds extra so put those chairs out or park your and your friend's cars in front of the door the night before.

To summarize, have everything nicely packed with weight distributed equally and fragile items adequately padded. Have your elevators and parking spaces reserved and everything will go smoothly.
If you follow these directions your cost will be minimized and your belongings safe.
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