I've moved far too many times in the last several years, so I can sympathise. I have advice about the box problem, though I don't know how useful this will be in the USA. The best boxes *here* for packing up a house are the ones bananas come in. They're made of very heavy cardboard, they're big enough to pack a good amount into but not big enough that they would then be too heavy to lift, they have a sort of self-closing lid thingy so you don't need to tape them up, and they have HANDLES.

You get them by going to the service entry of your local supermarket and saying "Do you have any empty banana boxes?" You will then be directed to a stack of banana boxes two storeys high and told to take as many as you want. When you've moved and unpacked, a simple reversal of this procedure gets rid of the boxes again. I've done this in numerous locations and at every major supermarket chain.

Hopefully, banana transportation follows an international standard -- if not, your supermarkets will probably have other sorts of boxes you can take for free.

Brunnen-"the only drawback is that all your books smell like bananas for six months"G