<p>do any parents have any experience with moving large instruments (say, a cello) across the country. it is not feasible for my family to drive for a number of reasons, so we will be flying and the airline has been less than helpful. should i ship it somehow? or perhaps try renting one in philadelphia? thank you!</p>
<p>Buy a seat for the cello, or give the thing--in its hard shell case--to the airport to ship with the regular luggage AT YOUR RISK.</p>
<p>FedEx ground is surprisingly cheap.</p>
<p>How to fly to college:</p>
<ol>
<li>Go on Orbitz.com, expedia.com, yahoo travel, travelocity, priceline, whatever.</li>
<li>Put in the nearest airport to your house in the first blank and the nearest airport to the college. Enter your departing and returning date.</li>
<li>Hit search.</li>
<li>Pick a departing flight.</li>
<li>Pick a returning flight.</li>
<li>Hit Book (this is a good time to get your credit card out.)</li>
<li>Pick a seat.</li>
<li>Enter your name, age, etc.</li>
<li>Finalize transaction.</li>
<li>Confirm transaction via email, with the site, or with the airline 24 hours after finalizing transaction. Print out an e-ticket, or a copy of the itinerary.</li>
<li>On your departure date, load all your stuff into your parents' car and head to the airport. Plan ahead so that you arrive at the airport 3 hours before the flight leaves. Make sure you have your e-ticket, photo ID (driver's license works well), and know what terminal the flight leaves out of.</li>
<li>Get to the airport and the right terminal, unload your stuff from the car. Rent a cart for $3, unless you have 2 suitcases or fewer.</li>
<li>Find the checkin counters for your airline while your parents are parking the car. Get in line. When your turn comes, give your e-ticket and photo ID to the agent and put your bags, one at at time, on the scale next to the counter. The agent will probably ask you what seat you want if you didn't specify. Give her/him your preference (window/aisle). Get your ID (and don't put it away, you'll need it when you go past security) back from him/her along with your boarding pass. Say goodbye to your parents.</li>
<li>Go past security. Comply to their every request unless you prefer to be stripsearched. You may now put your photo ID away, provided you pass security.</li>
<li>Grab some candy. It will help with those popping ears during approach and landing. Grab a magazine or two. It will help with the cheesy music and movies.</li>
<li>Go to the assigned gate for your flight. Make sure you cross-check the sign next to it (usually a large plasma TV) for the destination, airline and flight number with your boarding pass.</li>
<li>Wait and lounge until your row is invited on board. Keep your boarding pass out.</li>
<li>Be welcomed aboard the plane. Find your seat. Put your carryon in a place of your choice and sit. You may now put your boarding pass away. Now's a good time to make that last call and turn off your cellphone.</li>
<li>Put up with the same old boring safety demos for the 1 billionth time. Now's the time to bust out the magazine you bought at the airport.</li>
<li>Enjoy your flight. During approach and landing, consume the candy you bought as needed. If you have connections, repeat 21, 16, 17, 18, and 19, in that order.</li>
<li>Wait until the plane comes to a full and complete stop, then get up as quickly as possible. Get your carryon from the place of your choice and get off the plane.</li>
<li>Find the baggage carousel for your flight. Pick up your bags.</li>
<li>Leave the airport. Find ground transportation. Arrive at your college. Congratulate yourself for having successfully flown to college.</li>
</ol>
<p>JUST KIDDING. Actually I'm serious about the candy part, me being someone who has been on long international flights sooo many times.</p>
<p>Anyways you should ship your cello, INSURED, ahead of time. Make sure you write "hold until arrival" CLEARLY on the box. :)</p>
<p>Don't know when Roger last moved someone in/out of NYC...but there are numerous locations of Bed, Bath and Beyond, a couple of Home Depot's and KMart right in Manhattan.</p>
<p>However...having a car in Manhattan continues to be expensive, and difficult...it's rare to drive up to a convenient parking space, like a mall location! OP can contact the Manhattan store locations to find out about their delivery policies. </p>
<p>Also, regarding Thumpers post, I don't think I'd use my 50 lb/bag limit for toiletries and school supplies, unless I was traveling to a school in a very remote location, without any potential access to transportation (as one poster noted.)</p>
<p>One bed bath and beyond in Manhattan, on 6th ave around 19th street. The home depot in closest in proximity to the BB&B is on 23rd between 5th/6th. Both accessible by mass transit.</p>
<p>I would not depend on Kmart (2 one on 8th street near NYU the other at 34th street) everything always looks picked over.</p>
<p>Calmom, If D shopping in NYC go down town to Century 21 Department store for best prices on everything and she can pretty much one-stop shop. Definitely get one of those round folding hampers ( light weight, they fit in the closet and has a zipper and handle on the top so just zip and take all of your stuff to the laundry room).</p>
<p>Re laundry room trips: my D used her rolling suitcase as a vehicle to take clothes to the laundry room. The pop up hamper I provided doesn't have wheels.</p>
<p>Sybbie, thanks for the tip on Century 21- I'll be sure to share it with my daughter. There are 3 Bed Bath & Beyond stores listed on their site, and the person who came to the local Barnard orientation session says there is also one now up near the campus, though I can't find it online- but I'll let my d. figure it all out when she gets there. If there is one thing that girl knows, it's shopping. She has also made a request to room with a student who lives nearby -- always a smart choice for someone coming from far away. So if the request is honored, maybe she an her prospective roomie can do a little shopping together. Right now I'm nagging her to commit to a specific day/time to fly out, as the cheap flights are starting to sell out. </p>
<p>I like those hampers, too - but my daughter right now just uses a mesh bag with a zipper - she's taken that all over so she might be happy enough with that system. </p>
<p>I think there's a big advantage with sending the #2 kid off to college. With #1 we think we have to have every last detail planned -- with #2 we know better. Of course, it's that way all along with everything else, too, starting with infancy.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Re laundry room trips: my D used her rolling suitcase as a vehicle to take clothes to the laundry room. The pop up hamper I provided doesn't have wheels.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You don't want to give them reasons to pile up laundry :)
My D is not beyond doing that. </p>
<p>The up side to 19th street is Chelsea is really booming when it comes to shopping and she will be able to do other stuff while she is there (simply not just doing one thing).</p>
<p>The one at 65th street seems closer (it will be right on the # 1 line so she could just take it down town to 66th street) keep in mind that Fordham is in the neighbor hood, so stock could be limited by the time she gets here to shop.</p>
<p>IF you can use the online shop on your end, pick it up in the city, I would definitely use that option to endure that you have what you need. The east side store is at 61st and first which logistically is going to be a pain to get to from Barnard.</p>
<p>She will have a ball at century's as while she is picking up stuff for her room (no one is going to beat their prices for linen as she can get 250 thread count twin sheets for as low as $3.99)., she'll get shoes, sunglasses, bags, clothes, etc (now no sales tax for clothes/shoes that are priced at $110). </p>
<p>She should sigh up for topbutton.com, dailycandy.com (they will send her daily updates and notify her of sample sales (big cost savings) .</p>
<p>our D just left for NYC for a summer internship. We live in Ca. She had to take all her own bedding, pillows, towels, blankets, etc. in the 2 bags on the plane. We found that using space bags to compress the bedding and pillows saved an enormous amount of space. if she can't find a vacuum to compress the items when she leaves, she will just leave some of it behind.</p>
<p>DD flew to the other side of the country last year, and I went with her the first time around. We both could check 50 lb. weight limit with 62 cubic inch total for luggage. We opted for the 20x20x20 boxes from Office Max for $3.89 each. They held all her stuff, clothes, bedding, shoes etc. We bought pillows, egg crate and mattress topper there because they were bulky, took up too much space. Also bought a nice office chair there as well, Staples on sale. Picked up detergent, micro and fridge at Walmart and was done.</p>
<p>The roundtrip airfare was a steal, less than the cost of shipping the 3 boxes and much, much less than gas, hotel, meals than if we had driven...would have taken days there and days back. not too mention the wear and tear on the car. Spent just 3 days away and got everything done. Since then she has flown back and forth and brings stuff back and forth as she has needed it.</p>
<p>We have the deal alert on the computer that goes off whenever the price we set goes below our set limit. Same with DING from Southwest. Was able to get son's roundtrip tics non-stop into Newark for less than a tank of gas for Fall break, Turkey Day and Christmas!!</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>Fedex Ground....cheaper than UPS or USPS, includes first $100 insurance, and best of all, it gets there intact.
LandsEnd.com for bedding and towels.</p>
<p>Ah!! Lands End. That's why I took the job at UW. There are two Lands End's outlets (or "inlet" in their langage) in Madison. Dodgeville is not far away and sometime in August they empty out their HQ of all their stuff and have this huge sale in a park or something like that.</p>
<p>We shipped four large boxes UPS from Philadelphia to Chicago for our D. It was about $180, and they arrived the day before we did. Three of them arrived, that is; the fourth got completely lost in the UPS system (but then showed up back at our house about a week later -- they didn't charge us for it).</p>
<p>Anyway, this worked fine except for the one box getting lost.</p>
<p>$180.00 ??????????????????????</p>
<p>OK, Sybbie,you said the magic word: "shoes". I'm sure that my daughter will find her way there very quickly.</p>
<p>Son is graduating from Northwestern; we live in NJ. Frosh year two of us flew there for move in with several duffels each. I mailed computer to MailBoxes so that it arrived day before movein; I wanted to leave asap and not wait for their computer warehouse to open. I also mailed several boxes of stuff to him. Problem is now. He is in an apartment and must sell his furniture after graduation when most underclassment have moved out. He has lots of cheapie Target kitchen stuff -- $16 for
4 place setting dishes/glasses/silverware and pots/pans which I was certain would not hold up. He has a car there so we are driving home and I bet everything will not fit into the car with me as passenger. Guess in the 2 days we have to pack up we'll hafto box and send some stuff -- books, CDs, DVDs -- home. Move in is easy -- move out esp from an apt after 4 years is hard. Other moms warned me not to overlook time needed for cleaning boys' apartments which could be disasters.</p>
<p>Our daughter is going from Georgia to the Boston area, but she's going to campus a week early for a special program so she won't be able to move into her permanent room until the end of the week. I'm thinking that eBay might be a big help for items that we'd like to have arrive once she's transitioned to her permanent space (lamps, clocks, mattress topper, etc.). I've had good experiences with eBay sellers on special requests and arrangements, since the sellers are individuals dealing with buyers as individuals. And you generally get things so cheaply that the shipping cost is not much of an issue. During her first weeks at a new school, I'd hate to have her focused on trying to shop for things in an unfamiliar city.</p>
<p>I have 2 daughters at school over 1000 miles away from home. Have you checked out the Bed Bath and Beyond website? They have a checklist for items that a college student will need, and I found the list very helpful. We went to a local BBB store with the list, marked off everything we wanted and then went to the Wedding Registry counter where they set up our request. When we flew to where the college was, we went to BBB and picked up our pre-selected and wrapped parcel - 15 minutes, in and out! If the store doesn't have what you've ordered, they will get it from another store, so you don't have to worry about missing items. One suggestion: there was a BBB right near the school and they told me on the phone that they knew they would have several hundred orders to fill. Since I had rented a car, I sent my order to a store that was about 15 minutes away from where most of the colleges were that had only about 10 orders to fill. One posting mentioned x-long sheets, which I think most college dorms require. Don't bother to buy the special ones the colleges tell you about - any BBB/LNThings x-long sheets will do. We sent the rest of my girls' stuff by UPS, carefully insured. Again, a tip - bigger and heavier boxes are in a different price range than smaller, lighter boxes - you can figure this out from the UPS website. When I packed, it cost about $100. The next year, my daughter packed about the same amt of stuff, and it cost her $300 (big mistake not to watch over her shoulder!) </p>
<p>More important - where are you going to keep the stuff over the summer? Not all dorms have a place to keep things (neither of my girls' dorms do), and I didn't want to pay for storage. In each case, I found a friend of a friend with a dry basement who was willing to help out for a few years.</p>
<p>What's cheaper with UPS? To have several small, light boxes -- or fewer big, heavy boxes?</p>