Packing a U-Cube 50

My Potsdam job generously offered me 2000 euros to move. That's 2000 euros specifically to be used for the shipment of household goods, reimbursed by them. But most overseas moves either cost more (full service packing+shipping, running $3000+) or less (sell/give away all belongings, start fresh). David was advocating for getting rid of everything and starting fresh, but I argued that we'd spend at least 2000 euro replacing everything we could ship for 2000 euro.

We settled on using a U-Cube 50 from UPakWeShip. The idea is that they send you a flat packed unassembled cube, you put it together and fill it, then they ship it (via boat) to Europe. To us, the cube felt like a lot of space sometimes, then other times like no space at all. When I was looking for information and reviews on packing one of these, I didn't find all that much, so I thought I'd write a little more about it.

I think the site recommends giving them 6 weeks notice, but we booked ours ~4 weeks ahead of time and it turned out ok. We filled out an initial contract and made a deposit before they sent us our packed flat ucube:

When we opened it, it looked more like this:

There is some damage to the top of the cardboard sides, but it was ok because that part went under the lid. 

Online it says the dimensions are 45" by 37" and 39" high. So we got some standard size boxes (heavy duty small and medium boxes from Lowe's) and started stacking those into the palate. There is a little bit of wiggle room in the dimensions - when I packed three 18" x 12" boxes and placed them next to each other, they measured ~38.5" instead of 36" due to the width of the cardboard and a little bulging. That ended up being fine, but it was a little bit of a tight squeeze to get the cardboard sides on.

We ended up setting it up in our living room to make sure that all of the boxes would fit when we finally packed it for pickup outside. The sides are cardboard and there's no lock, so we did not want to leave it outside without watching it. It would be an equally bad idea to set it up for the first time on pickup day and be surprised to find out that nothing fits how you would hope.

Here is how the first rows of boxes went in on moving day:

After that, I had to get creative and start building boxes that were slightly different sizes. Below shows our first few of those - we had some art prints to ship (on the left) and needed a slightly taller box for a few items (in the back on the right). I ended up building quite a few boxes in strange sizes, starting with large heavy duty boxes as a base. 

After that the sides went on, so packing looked a lot less interesting. This is the last picture I took  - it includes all of our boxes packed up to the top. 

After this, we put the lid on and waited for the truck to show up. The only picture I have with a lid on is from our trial runs in the living room:

We fit 16 total boxes in the UCube. I would say 12 of those are relatively big boxes (meaning roughly a 12" x 16" x 16" or bigger) and the other four are full of odds and ends in the corners.

Each box is numbered (you can see the signs and the writing on the boxes) and we have a spreadsheet listing the contents of each one. I would do this anyway (I used letters, not numbers, for our Seattle-Columbus move), but it is also required for customs and insurance. 

The driver picking up our cube wasn't going far, but I think he was passing it on to another driver who would bring it to the nearby shipping terminal. After that, it heads to the coast and gets on a boat (we apparently get an email when that happens). It'll clear customs in the UK, then get shipped to Berlin. We've been told 6-8 weeks, so we're hoping to have our own apartment by then. Hopefully I'll have an unpacking blog post within a few months!