As exciting as finding a new home or apartment can be, the actual process of moving is quite a chore. Nobody ever realizes how many things they actually own until they are piled up in front of them in the living room. Dragging couches and bookcases up and down stairs and through door frames can be a serious headache as well as a killer backache. That’s why it’s important to never move on your own, but instead to incorporate your own personal slave army known congenially as your good friends to help you move. What are friends for if not for back breaking labour done for free?

Your real friends should jump at the opportunity to lend a hand for nothing more than a simple please and thank you, but the more resistant ones may need some subtle massaging. There are many tactics available to the relocating tenant. It is merely a matter of reading your friends and employing the correct strategy. Try the following suggestions on your pals, and the annoying challenge of fitting a love seat through the front door will no longer be yours and yours alone, but instead a shared, bonding experience…or at least that’s what you can tell them.

Alcoholics Make For Great Labourers

This is a fail safe. If you place a case of brew at the end of the moving day rainbow, you won’t have to beg your friends to help you…they’ll be begging you! It can be safely said that if you give anyone enough beer they’ll do anything you ask; words of caution and a useful on hand fact. The best part about paying your labourers with alcohol is, that like any good captain, you can partake in the spoils when the mission is accomplished. Be warned though; don’t crack any bottles until you’ve completed the move. Lamps and dishes are fragile enough without being handled by drunks.

The Guilt Trip

While you’re compiling your list of what you’re planning to bring to your new home, make a second list….of selfless things you’ve done for your friends over the years. That way you’ll be prepared to lay the biggest guilt trip ever on your work wary friends. A simple reminder of the time you took a metaphorical bullet for them will make lugging a box spring down a couple flights of stairs not seem so bad. If you haven’t done that many selfless acts for you pals, well…make something up. Just make sure you act deeply offended when they claim they can’t remember and they’ll eventually crack.