Moving a Big Book Collection in Evanston: The Beth Rogers Move

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These guys were amazing! I feel so bad that I have so many books but they blew thru the move quickly and everything arrived just as it left.

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Moving a Big Book Collection in Evanston: The Beth Rogers Move

A box of books doesn't look like much until you try to pick it up. Then it's obvious why a big personal library is quietly one of the hardest things a moving crew deals with. Beth Rogers had exactly that kind of move in Evanston, a media-heavy household with a serious book collection, and she said afterward that we "blew thru" it. Here's how you move that much concentrated weight quickly without hurting anyone or anything.

Why books are their own problem

Books are deceptively brutal. They're dense, so a given volume of them weighs far more than the same volume of, say, clothes or pillows. Fill a big box with books and you've built something a person can't safely lift and a box can't reliably hold. Either the bottom gives out, or someone's back does.

So the first rule with a library is small boxes. We pack books into smaller, heavy-duty cartons that stay light enough to carry safely and sturdy enough not to crush under their own weight when they're stacked. It sounds minor, but choosing the right box size is the single thing that keeps a book move from turning into a pile of split cartons and sore backs. A few hundred books can outweigh a couch, except they show up as a hundred small pieces instead of one big one, which is its own kind of work.

Turning the weight into an advantage

Here's the part that actually makes a heavy move fast: we use those dense book cartons on purpose. In the truck, they go down first, as the floor of the load. Uniform, heavy, and stable, they form a low, level base that everything else stacks onto, which keeps the whole load's center of gravity down and stops it shifting on the road. The very thing that makes books a pain to carry is what makes them a perfect foundation once they're on the truck.

Speed came from the right equipment, too. Instead of hauling cartons one at a time, the crew used dollies to move several at once, which cut the number of trips way down. Fewer trips is the whole secret to a fast move, and it's why Beth felt like we blew through it. Floor runners went down first, of course, so all that back-and-forth never touched her floors.

The furniture got the usual care, wrapped in moving blankets and shrink wrap, then strapped to the truck's rails so nothing could budge on the drive. Everything arrived exactly as it left, books and all.

If you've got a wall of bookshelves, a home office, or any local move that's heavier than it looks, we know how to handle the weight, and we can pack it for you too if you'd rather not box up three hundred books yourself. We've been moving Evanston households since 1982.

Thanks, Beth, for being so organized, and for trusting us with the heavy stuff. Reach us at (773) 275-4100 or info@wcmoving.com. And if you're moving in Evanston, we already know the neighborhood.