Random fact of the day: jellyfish are terrifying.  That isn’t the actual random fact, although it is a fact.  The actual random fact is that Portuguese jellyfish can grow up to a mile long.  Can you imagine the type of prey they catch with that kind of war path?  A mile long?  I mean, that’s over five thousand feet!  It’s just insane.  No creature on the face of this earth should ever be that long.  Ever.  It makes me never want to go into the ocean ever again.  Regular jellyfish are scary enough.  Ones that are a mile long kind of make me think someone has to be making this up.

How many of you would would rather deal with a Portuguese jellyfish over moving?  (Take a minute to think about moving supplies in comparison with giant tentacles a mile long.  Oh, and the tentacles are electrically charged.) I’m thinking not very many.  I’m thinking not very many at all.  And the ones that think they would have either never moved or they’ve moved no less than one thousand times, and each time was a nightmare.  Or they might be descendants of Apollo or Achilles, in which case a Portuguese jellyfish is nothing compared to the skolopendra.

As for myself, I would rather move every year of my life if it keeps me far away from terrifying nautical creatures.  I don’t even really like fish that much, to be honest.  Although I do have this really cute memory of swimming in a beach in Guam, that crystal clear water and almost white sand, and there were these adorable little tropical fish, like Nemos and Dories, and they were diving into my feet trying to eat my toes.  As my cousin likes to say: totes adorbs.  But you know what isn’t totes adorbs?  Moving supplies.  I’m not gonna lie, as much as I don’t like fish I don’t like piles of boxes and stacks of tape either.  I don’t like the smell of permanent marker or the sound of it squeaking on cardboard.  And yet, still, moving supplies are always the better option.  Sometimes you just have to go with the lesser of two evils.  Anything on land is preferable to something out of your element, anyway.  It’s like this book I’m reading about World War II bomber crews, and the insane amount of stress that came with their job.

I’ll take good old terra firma, thank you very much.

When it comes to getting your hands on some quality packing supplies there are a couple things that you should take into consideration.  For one, they don’t have to be a name-brand, or sold by a large corporation.  For example, U-Haul sells quality packing supplies, but they also cost far more than anything you are going to buy anywhere else.  I mean, I was downright appalled at UHaul’s prices.  Over three dollars for one, medium-sized box?  Get out of town!  If you were to buy a bundle of medium-sized boxes from an online store you could get about twenty-five for around thirty dollars.  That’s two and a half times more than you would be getting at UHaul’s prices.  Also, the well-known home improvement stores sells quality packing supplies, but they are also upcharged, and there is hardly any variety to speak of.  Like three.  As in, three different sizes of to choose, and three different kinds of tape to choose from.

A major component to choosing quality packing supplies is considering what you need.  A lot of times people get frustrated with the materials they are using when it turns out they aren’t using the right kinds of material to begin with.  They think that the material must be crappy, and don’t consider that maybe they made a poor choice (no offense).  If you are moving some heavy stuff, be sure to get heavy-duty boxes.  This way you save yourself the pain and heartache that comes when boxes start tearing and stuff starts breaking.  If you need something to be properly cushioned, don’t just use an old hand towel wrapped around three or four different coffee mugs that you got handed down from your grandmother, use bubble wrap.

Have you ever watched a moving company?  They use blankets to drape over furniture.  They bring rolls of shrink wrap to wrap around awkwardly shaped items.  They use inches of brown paper to protect things inside of boxes.  They use heavy duty tape that doesn’t peel off in a sliver every time you try to use it.  You wind up paying out the wazz for them to do all of this, which is why I recommend that you do it all yourself, but the point is that they know the “quality” in “quality shipping supplies” really lies in what the job calls for, having that on hand, and then using everything appropriately.