Military families have certain responsibilities when packing for a permanent change of station (PCS) move, and Isabel Schmitt has made it her business to know the ins and outs.
The Army veteran and spouse co-founded the company LOGSA Mil Moves to help families get packed for their PCS. The company employs military spouses and has recently expanded to perform more parts of the moving process in addition to packing.
In an episode of PCS with Military.com, Schmitt shares some of her best points for prepping your household goods, along with mistakes to steer clear of.
1. Do Your Chores
A simple but critical part of packing is to keep your goods shipshape, Schmitt says.
"Dishes, washed. Laundry, done. Trash, thrown away -- I will tell you, the trash is like a huge issue," she explains. A trash can with some heavyish trash inside is liable to get packed up by a team of packers moving briskly during the peak summer PCS season.
Related: Insider Tips for Your First Military PCS Pack-Out
"A load team is going to not purposefully pack trash," Schmitt said. "But when it comes to peak season and ... they're moving quickly, they're going to look at that trash can, they're going to put a blanket over it, they're going to tape it and they're going to put it into the truck."
2. Moisture Turns to Mold
Finish some of those chores a few days in advance so the likes of dishes and your washing machine have enough time to dry thoroughly.
Front-loading washers, in particular, "hold moisture," Schmitt said. If you wait until the last minute to do your laundry and the machine hasn't dried by moving day, "now you're talking about a mold issue on the other side."
She also reminds PCS'ers to look for the shipping bolts for their washer drums and to get them installed in advance, "to avoid any issue with damage to that drum."
3. Secure the 'No-Pack' Items
Schmitt suggests keeping items you don't want to send with the movers in a car, for example, or in a bathtub behind a shower curtain marked with a big "X" in blue painter's tape.
A proponent of keeping a PCS binder with important documents -- both related and unrelated to the move -- she advises to "make sure that the binder is nowhere near where the pack crews might be packing items."
4. Get Rid of Things
Purging unwanted items in advance not only cuts down on clutter on the other side, it's also better for the environment, Schmitt said.
"Think about how big the United States is," Schmitt said, referring to how far the unwanted bulk winds up getting moved. "And then think about shipments that have to go overseas and get crated. If you are moving things that you no longer need, you're not being helpful when it comes to the planet."
Schmitt "schlepped around the giant box of cords until that last PCS to Korea," she admitted, while at the same time, "there's a secondary market for items like that. You can certainly put that item on eBay, and I am sure there's a collector out there who would love to have it."
-- Amanda Miller can be reached at amanda.miller@military.com.
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