How to move a garage, workshop or tool collection
Ask a household how many rooms are moving and the garage is rarely counted. Then the crew opens the door on the morning and finds a workbench, a tool chest that weighs more than the fridge, a mower, a snowblower, three bicycles, a chest freezer and forty half-full containers of things that cannot legally go on the truck. The estimate did not include any of it, and the day just got longer.
This is the guide to moving that room. It covers what to do with the things that cannot be moved, how to pack the things that can, and how to handle the few pieces that need their own plan. The kitchen guide is the only other room guide on this site, and the garage is harder.
Start with what cannot go, because it decides the rest
A moving truck will not carry anything that can ignite, leak or explode, and the garage is where all of it lives: gasoline, propane, paint, thinners, pesticides, pool chemicals, fertilizer, lighter fluid, aerosols, the half can of stain from the deck project. The full list is in the guide to what movers will not move. What this guide adds is what to do about it, because the answer is not the trash can.
Household hazardous waste in the Des Moines metro has its own collection route, and the right move is to book it early rather than discover in the last week that the cupboard of chemicals has nowhere to go. Full cans of paint can often be donated or given away. Anything you would buy again for the new house, use up or hand to a neighbor.
Machines with engines are the case that surprises people. A mower, a snowblower, a string trimmer, a pressure washer or a generator can go on the truck, but only with the fuel drained and, ideally, run dry, and the oil is worth draining on anything that will be tipped. Do it a few days ahead so the fumes clear before the machine is wrapped and loaded.
- Fuel, propane, paint, solvents, chemicals and aerosols: hazardous waste collection, donation, or use them up
- Engines: fuel drained and run dry, oil drained if the machine will be on its side
- Propane tanks, including the one on the grill: they ride in your own vehicle or stay behind
- Car batteries, and anything else with a lead-acid cell, handled separately
- The chest freezer: emptied, defrosted and dried at least a day ahead
Sort it before you pack it
A garage accumulates rather than being furnished, so most of what is in it was never chosen. Before a box is packed, walk it with a hard rule: anything unused in two years, broken, duplicated, or belonging to a house you no longer own does not move. That pile is nearly always bigger than the one that goes.
That pile has three exits, and they take lead time in this order: sell, donate, dispose. Tools sell well and quickly. Sports equipment and bicycles donate easily. Scrap metal has a route of its own. What is left is a junk removal job, and it can be booked as one visit for the whole pile rather than dragged to the curb across four weeks of collection days.
Packing tools, and why the tool chest is the problem
Hand tools go in small boxes, because a book-sized box of wrenches will not be lifted by anyone. Wrap anything with an edge, tape tool boxes shut, and keep sets in the case they came in. Power tools go in their own cases where those exist, batteries removed and packed separately, cords coiled and tied. Bits, blades and fasteners go in sealed, labeled containers, because a loose box of screws spills once and is never sorted again.
The rolling tool chest is the heaviest thing most homes own and the piece most people get wrong. Loaded, it can outweigh a piano, and it does not have a piano's handles. Empty every drawer into boxes, lock or tape every drawer shut, and tell the estimator its dimensions and that it is empty. A chest moved full is a two-person lift that fails on the first step of the ramp.
The workbench is the other piece to think about. Bolted to the wall, it stays unless you take it down yourself. Freestanding, it usually needs the top separated from the frame to fit through a door. Take photos before disassembly and bag the hardware to the frame it came from.
The big awkward things
Bicycles go on the truck whole, with the pedals turned in and something between them, because bare bicycles stacked together scratch everything they touch. Ladders travel along the truck wall and are easy. A grill goes without its tank and charcoal, and the grates are worth wrapping separately.
Motorcycles, gun safes and full-size shop machinery are specialty items rather than garage contents. They have weight, they have a center of gravity that does not sit where you expect, and they need to be reviewed before the day rather than found on it. Send the crew the item, its dimensions and a photograph of the path out, and confirm it is accepted before the move is scheduled. The piano and gun safe guide explains how that review goes.
Move day, and the order of loading
A garage usually loads first and unloads last, because its heavy, dense, unbreakable contents make a good floor for the rest of the load. So it has to be ready before the crew arrives: boxed, machines drained, chest empty, and the pile that is not coming moved aside and marked so nothing from it ends up on the truck by accident.
At the new house, decide where the workbench and the tool chest go before the truck opens, because they are the pieces nobody wants to move twice. Then the rest can wait; a garage is the one room of the house it is acceptable to unpack over a month.