Moving House is An Exercise in Efficiency, But The Right Car Makes it Easier

There are a good many experiences that you will go through in life as you grow, but one of the most peculiar is the challenge of moving houses. If you’ve ever had to stay in a college dorm or if move to a different town to work, you will understand the rather tricky nature of trying to pack your entire life into a series of boxes and move them great distances. But moving house is a little more difficult than that- chiefly because you usually don’t realize how much stuff you actually have.

The things you touch and interact with day to day will usually be enough to fill up a small car, but try sizing up your collection of books and clothes and photo albums and broomsticks and ironing boards, and you eventually find yourself with far more things that your average hatchback can handle even with the seats dropped down.

While you have the option of hiring a professional mover, you should reserve this for the more serious things like refrigerators and beds. As for the rest of the small items, pack them into cardboard boxes (that you’ve appropriated from the back of grocery stores) and load them into your vehicle of choice. For this exercise, we have the Ford EcoSport- a crossover based on the Ford Fiesta that has a number of useful features to maximize cargo area.

When you’re lifting heavy things, your biggest friend is a low load floor and flat folding seats. The Ford EcoSport has both of these, making it easier to get items in and out without exerting too much effort. The rear hatch swings open rather than opening upwards, reducing the amount of effort required- as well as having the added benefit that you can push the hatch back shut if you find your cargo starts to spill out.

While Ford was keen to promote the EcoSport’s ability to fit an entire washing machine inside the cargo area, it also serves to hold cupboards and boxes fairly well. We couldn’t get our cupboard fitted in vertically, so we flipped it on its side and placed it on the floor, fitting perfectly within the dimensions of the cargo area. On top of this we stacked extra boxes of other items, and of course an ironing board as the cherry on top.

Securing your cargo is also especially important. While things may sit pretty before you set off on your journey, you may find that they don’t always remain still when you’re steering and accelerating; the ironing board in particular was constantly slapping me in the face whenever I braked to negotiate a corner- definitely a lesson learned for the future.

Getting things out is as easy as getting them in, and before you know it the cargo bed is as empty as when you began. As it is with moving house, you will be performing this trip many times, filling and emptying the cargo bed as you go. With the EcoSport it’s a much easier task and you can carry more in a single trip, reducing the number of times you need to travel back and forth.

Even if you’re not moving house or carrying washing machines around, the Ford EcoSport is a pretty versatile car. Over the course of the weekend when it wasn’t being used to ferry housewares, a friend of mine enlisted my help to move his engine and gearbox from Petaling Jaya to Shah Alam, and of course the EcoSport swallowed it up whole with little protest. But that’s a story for another time.