My reasoning is that if I put in the hours of back-breaking labour it takes to get them and all their giant, awkwardly shaped belongings from one house to the next, I'll build up friendship capital that I can tap at a later date when I have to move house myself.
In recent years, though, it's dawned on me that I'm probably getting ripped off.
Where I and my small collection of modestly sized possessions have stayed in the same house for six years now, most of my friends - whose only hobby, it appears, is not throwing things away - start the process of moving within minutes of arriving at a new address. What's more, they like nothing better than moving into ever more cramped and difficult-to-enter apartments.
Friend: "Hi James, thanks for coming. As you know, I can afford to hire movers, but choose not to. My new house is a mushroom at the top of a cliff that you can only access by going up a covered waterslide. You can carry the bookshelf."
Whether it's because I look big enough to help lift couches or dimwitted enough to agree to do so, I have somehow come to be the go-to guy for all of these people when it comes to changing residences.
I'm not sure how many people I've moved over the past half decade, but by my reckoning I've built up enough friendship capital at this point that I could reasonably ask any of my acquaintances to carry everything I own to the International Space Station and still have enough capital left over to make them repaint it.
It seems unlikely this is ever going to happen, though. Not least because I don't want to move to the space station - regardless of the fact that it's roomier than my place and the food is clearly better. Plus there are probably rules about who can move there. And whether or not you can paint it.
With most of my friends and acquaintances, this lopsided relationship isn't really a big deal. They own a reasonable number of more-or-less square things that humans can lift, a vehicle in which one can fit objects larger than two adjacent pieces of bread and on moving day have something resembling a plan.
There are exceptions, though. These are the friends who, much as they excel in other areas, have been cursed with the organizational skills of hyenas. It's to those people this column is directed. I hope they're reading it. If they haven't somehow misplaced it, with all of their moving boxes, packing tape, moving van and so on.
Here, surprisingly, we get to the point. Below are five rules for not being a total jerk when asking your friends to help you move:
Moving Rule 1: Throw away stuff you clearly don't need
Not long ago, I arrived on a rainy Saturday to help a friend out of her old place, to discover among her things a six-foot-high cat tower. It was one of those weirdly shaped carpeted monstrosities that feels like it's bolted directly to the centre of the earth.
As I struggled to heave it up a set of stairs, it occurred to me that it was probably something that she didn't need to own at all. Her cat, by all appearances, was entirely floor-dwelling. Why did it need a tower? Was it going to be besieged?
It wasn't. This was just one of countless examples of items people choose not to throw away until after they've finished moving. Do you need that encyclopedia that you've had since people had encyclopedias? Be a good person and ditch them. Friends don't let friends move garbage.
Moving Rule 2: Don't basically pack nothing
There is nothing worse than arriving on moving day to find one's friend's home looking like it has been rifled through by spies. Spies with a weird fascination with unfolded laundry, kitchen utensils, power cords and other irregularly shaped objects. Packing means packing. Everything.
There's a certain breed of homeowner who doesn't recognize this.
"OK, so all my things are parceled up except for absolutely everything that isn't rectangular. In your first load, you can take these soccer balls, a wet bar of soap and my throwing stars. I figured we could take them out to the truck in our hands. Oh, and grab one of the live snakes on your way out. I didn't have a box for them."
Your friends want to finish your move prior to the next glaciation. Please, finish packing.
Moving Rule 3: Make gigantic objects less gigantic, where possible
It's a curious law of the universe that the larger and heavier one's friend's furniture is, the more irrationally shaped one's friend's home. For some reason, it's always the guy with the 20-foot couch whose hallway looks like something a Minotaur might live in.
There are few things more infuriating than trying to get an inflexible piece of furniture around a 270-degree bend. If you have something gigantic, pull it apart. Or at the very least don't stuff it full of other things.
("There was some space in the dresser I decided to use it for my cinder block collection. Smart, hey? You know what's also neat? My hallway is in the shape of my name.")
Moving Rule 4: Get a van
As anyone who's seen a GMC commercial knows, pickup trucks are for hauling horses, catching dusty 2x4's dropped from cranes and parking at the top of bluffs in the American Midwest. Not for moving house. Contrary to popular opinion, turning down a cube van in favour of vehicle that can hold, at most, half of any given piece of furniture you own is not a way to
save time.
Moving Rule 5: Don't move your possessions to the truck in exactly the opposite order from which they should obviously be moved
With some less gifted home movers, it's not just that they appear not to have moved house before, it's like they've never moved objects before:
"Here's the plan: We fill the truck with house plants, and then take the boxes of china out there, take all the houseplants back out, put the boxes of china in and then put back in the houseplants on top. At that point, we can figure out what to do with all these girders."
Don't.
These rules are my way of drawing a line in the sand. From now on, you fail to follow them, and I fail to show up at your house.
Ah, who am I kidding? I'll move you anyway. Just pack the damn snakes.
