I don't have any good advice about furniture, but I have one very heartfelt piece of advice about moving.
If you're planning on moving on your own, for 4 or 5 days before you start the move, don't eat out anywhere. If you're not an expert chef, stick with canned, instant, or otherwise pre-made meals during those days as well.
I'll tell you why I recommend this:
I had to move on my own once, back in 1997. I had to be out of the apartment at the end of the month without fail (a new tenant was moving in on the first day of the next month). That was a situation I'd faced many times before as I was still in university, but I'd never been completely on my own. Anyway, the last day of the month was a Sunday ... which I thought was great, because I could do all the moving on Saturday, and then if I needed any extra time, I could finish on the Sunday. However, because it was a weekend, I had to arrange for the power to be cut on the Thursday (no options for Friday for some reason). With that no-power deadline looming, and just the fact that it was time to move anyway, I worked hard to get rid of as much food as possible in the weeks before the move. I did a good enough job that I wound up eating out for every meal except breakfast during that last week.
Saturday morning arrived, and I headed out early to pick up the cargo van I'd rented. Despite feeling more tired than I thought I should, I figured I was all set - all the utilities had been taken care of, I had rented a fantastic cargo van, and I had two full days to work if I needed the time. (I didn't expect it to take more than a day.) By the time I got back to my apartment however, the situation had changed. I started to feel sick. I mean really, really sick. Given the situation, I had no choice but to start work anyway. Even moving small, light items became a huge effort. I had to stop and rest after
every single box. And I still had to get all of my heavy furniture and belongings out of that second story apartment down to the van at the (busy) street. By noon or 1 pm I thought I was going to die, and there was still a huge amount of work to do. All I wanted to do was crawl back into bed.
Things continued to get worse. There's nothing like struggling to drag bookshelves and boxes down a long flight of stairs while feeling like you're going to die, only to have to stop every 20 minutes to ... uhhh ... bleed some more in the bathroom. Yeah, you read that right. That's the nicest way I can put it.
A few days later, after finishing the Move From Hell (TM) and visiting the hospital, I learned from the tests they ran that I'd been nailed by campylobacter ... a bacteria that's actually responsible for far more food poisoning cases each year (2.4 million people in the US alone) than e-coli is - it just doesn't get the same media attention because it's typically less fatal. I can tell you that that fact didn't make it any more enjoyable. The CDC's site includes some
information about campylobacter, including a brief mention of the "Clinical Features":
Fever, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea (often bloody).
Let me just state for the record that that's a supreme understatement - it really doesn't do the experience justice.
Like I said ... if you have no choice about the "moving on your own" thing, make sure that no one else does any cooking for you during the days before the event. I realize that I'm a king of bad luck and bad timing, but if you're doing this move without any help, it may be worth your while to avoid as many risks as possible.
