Moving to the City Bowl is all fun and games until you remember that Cape Town was apparently designed by someone with a personal vendetta against flat roads, available parking, and getting furniture through apartment doors.
Up until now, this moving diary has mostly existed in the land of plans and hypotheticals: deciding to leave home, hunting for an apartment, and finally signing a lease. But that’s all about to change. My dream of moving to the City Bowl has become a reality!
So, welcome to Part 4: the big move. I’m taking you along for my first proper moving day with Wise Move, including how I organised it, what it cost, the lessons Cape Town taught me along the way, and whether I, my belongings, and my dignity all made it to the City Bowl in one piece.
If you’re wondering how we got here, you can catch up with parts 1–3:
Living with a flatmate comes with many bonuses. One of the early advantages is getting to split the moving responsibilities – we were each in charge of getting our own things into the flat.
My parents were already moving a few things around, so they kindly brought over some of the extras, including my fridge and desk.
That left the main haul from storage in Tokai to Vredehoek, with one important detour along the way. Here’s the breakdown of what I needed to be moved and how we planned on getting it there.
Next step: Finding the best movers for the job.
I knew from the beginning that there was no easier way to book a moving team than with Wise Move. Little did I know just how easy it would be.
Here’s all I needed to do:
Having never organised a move before, I really appreciated how I was guided through each step to make sure I didn’t forget anything important. Plus, it literally took less than 10 minutes to do.
And now I just had to sit and wait for the movers to come to me (spoiler alert: I didn’t have to wait that long).
My first price came through less than two hours later at R2 200, followed by another the next morning at R2 400. Now I just had to pick the one that worked best for me, comparing not just prices, but also the reviews. But how to choose?
Without even needing to reach out for help, I received a lovely phone call from the Wise Move support team, asking if I needed any assistance. And with a bit of expert insight, the winner is … (drum roll please).
I decided to book the second quote I received. Why? They’re a Wise Move supermover and came with:
Soon after booking, I received a call from the moving team to confirm everything, including a 10:30 collection time and my couch detour, assuring that it was included in the quote.
This immediate clear communication reassured me that I was in safe and expert hands. I could trust the professionals to do the heavy lifting while I could focus on the final details.
Book movers: check! Now I just had a few more things to do before moving day.
The storage unit was packed like an advanced game of Tetris. So we arrived early to rearrange things and clear a path to my furniture. Luckily, the moving team arrived about 20 minutes ahead of schedule and immediately jumped in to help.
Within half an hour, the truck was loaded with:
The side table was buried too deep to rescue, so they let me swap it for the TV on the spot. Apparently moving-day plans changing slightly is not, in fact, the end of civilisation.
By 10:35, we were heading for stop number two.
My Facebook-era furniture collection continued with a second-hand couch in Constantia.
Fortunately, it was just off the highway and about as easy as a furniture pickup could possibly be.
Gate opened. Couch waiting in the driveway. Truck rearranged. Couch loaded. And off we went to Vredehoek.
What I initially thought would be a major pain and inconvenience for the movers (so much so I was scared to ask) ended up being no big deal at all.
I made it to the apartment slightly ahead of the truck, giving me just enough time to run upstairs, clear some space, and have a brief Rachel-and-Phoebe-jumping-in-Ross’s-new-apartment moment.
Next, the truck arrived, and we had the pleasure of trying to figure out where the heck to park. The road itself was wide enough, but every useful parking space was taken. The best option was temporarily stopping on a yellow line. Did we receive a few hoots? Naturally. We always kept someone with the truck, though, and started unloading quickly.
First came the easy stuff: crates, mirror, TV, and mattress. This was up in 15 minutes.
Then the movers looked at the staircase. Then they looked at the couch. Then they looked at the bed base. And this is where moving day took an unexpected turn.
I’m not going to lie: when they said they were going to hoist up the bed base and couch, my brain kind of broke. I just had visions of my new (old) couch dangling two storeys above the ground before plummeting dramatically to its death. But this clearly was not the movers' first rodeo.
Within minutes:
And somehow, it looked effortless.
My jaw was somewhere around ground-floor level while the couch casually floated towards the apartment. The bed base followed, and within minutes both were safely inside.
Without professional movers, I’m fairly confident we'd still be in that stairwell reenacting the Friends scene with Ross yelling “PIVOT!” at Rachel and Chandler.
Lesson learnt: If large furniture and awkward stairs are involved, book the movers – you’ll thank yourself later and avoid claiming the ground floor passageway as your new lounge.
Once everything was inside, the team could easily have called it a day. Instead, they also:
Small things, but after a morning of moving, they made a surprisingly big difference. Plus, they made a point of not ripping the
By 12:30, it was over.
From meeting the movers to having everything inside my new apartment had taken roughly two hours.
I’d gone into my first properly organised move expecting a long, stressful, exhausting day. Instead, the movers handled every unexpected curveball – buried furniture, an extra crate, the couch stop, tricky parking, and furniture that quite literally could not fit up the stairs.
And somehow I still had most of Saturday left to unpack.
Moving costs obviously depend on how much you own, where you’re going, and how complicated the move is. For mine, here’s the full breakdown:
| Movers from Wise Move | R2,400 |
| Packing materials | R0 |
| Hidden fees | R0 |
| Additional charges post-move | R0 |
| Total | R2,400 |
That’s it. Fixed prices and no hidden costs – that’s one of the many beauties of Wise Move.
And yes, I fortunately only had to move a portion of all the stuff, and I didn’t have to worry about things like packing materials (thanks to moving 3 times in 3 years), but it’s comforting to know that the price I was quoted for is the price I paid in the end.
My first proper moving day taught me a few things I’ll definitely remember next time:
Most important lesson: If I'm ever going to move again (hopefully not too soon), best be sure I'll be using Wise move.
And just like that, after months of talking about moving to the City Bowl, I was actually there.
The rest of the afternoon disappeared into unpacking, making my bed, and trying to make some order out of the boxes. My flatmate collected her table and chairs, and by evening we had just enough furniture to sit down for our first dinner together.
Nothing was fully unpacked. The apartment was nowhere near finished. But we had beds, a couch, a table, a view over the City Bowl, and a functioning stove to cook dinner on.
I’d made the move. Now let’s find out what living in Cape Town City Bowl is actually like.
