No Shelves to Line, Floors to Clean or Boxes to Unpack : She Makes All the Right Moves in Your Move

Imagine moving to a new home and finding flowers on the table, food in the refrigerator, dishes in the cupboards, linens on the bed, clothes in the closet--everything in place.

No shelves to line, floors to clean or boxes to unpack.

It might be the dream of everybody facing what to many is a nightmare, but it really happened to about 40 families in the San Diego area, thanks to Gloria Booth and her team of women workers.

And now that Booth has given her Poway-based company, Royal UNpacking Service, a three-year trial run down south, she’s training more workers and expanding her operation--first to the north, into Orange and Los Angeles counties; then maybe to Phoenix, where her parents live; then perhaps to Washington, D. C., where she lived for many years, and then--who knows?

‘Hidden Treasures’

Her goal is to make moving as pleasant as possible for as many people as possible while putting older women, whom she calls “the hidden treasures of this country,” to work.

“I’m going to put mature women to work all over this country,” she said, “and if I can put them to work in an environment where they feel comfortable, I’ll feel great.”

Booth, a grandmother, is 56, but has an energy level that Maria Morris, assistant director of the Small Business Development Center of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, termed “phenomenal.”

“She’s a great example to all businesspeople but especially to older women,” Morris said, “because she shows that being able to take an idea and move it forward, being an entrepreneur, has nothing to do with age.”

Once an Actress

Booth didn’t even get the idea for her company until long after her husband retired as a Navy captain. Her father is a retired Army colonel. In her lifetime, Booth has done her share of moving.

Except for a stint as an actress (under her maiden name of Gloria Doman) in the ‘50s as a co-star with Virginia Bruce in the movie “Istanbul,” Booth devoted her life to her family and volunteer activities until she started her company.

She raised five children as a commanding officer’s wife, was responsible for handling the affairs of more than 200 officers’ and enlisted men’s wives. She was, she likes to say, “the head mama.”

Most of the 25 women she currently uses from one job to another never worked outside their homes before joining Booth, either.

Different Talents

“Some are younger than I, and some are older, but they’re all used to doing work in their homes, and they love it,” she said. “After 20 years of being a housewife, some women don’t think they amount to anything, but they have talents even they don’t know.”

Using their talents, even on a part-time basis--which is how most of Booth’s workers work, gives the women a sense of self worth, she says.

What kind of talents do her workers have?

Some have a talent for organizing linen closets so that king-sized sheets are neatly folded on one labeled shelf, twin-sized sheets on another.

Some have a talent for cutting and laying white vinyl tiles for kitchen shelves--”so when the molasses spills, all you have to do is take a wet cloth and wipe up the mess,” Booth explains.

On Job Three Days

Other women who work for her have talents in arranging books, placing indoor/outdoor carpeting in cupboards where pots and pans go, getting utilities and telephones hooked up, making beds, and doing whatever else it can take to get a house in order after a move.

For three days, generally, after the moving van arrives with a shipment of household goods, “six of us become that home’s housewife,” she said.

Kathy Shilkret, director of media relations for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, said, “The closest thing I’ve heard to it is ‘Rent-A-Yenta,’ which mainly does errands.”

Morris, of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, said, “To my knowledge, the kind of service Gloria provides is unique, because it is one step beyond what the normal packing/unpacking service provides. And if moving companies would recognize it, she could complement what they do, because she puts in place what they move. Gloria even has a designer who decides where a family’s beautiful things should go.”

Interview With Client

Booth’s work on a home begins before moving day with a client interview. “We make an effort to put things where they want, but we also want to go by their life styles. Are they left-handed? Do they do a lot of formal entertaining? Such things can make a difference in knowing where things go.”

After the interview, she gives the clients a few packing instructions and some colored labels to put on boxes. “We use a color-coded system to make it easier for the movers--yellow for the kitchen, blue for the living room, black for the garage, green for a bedroom and so on,” she explained.

If the client has a pet, Booth will even take care of it during the move--”to avoid kennel trauma,” she says. “We’ll pick up Poopsy Babe, and she’ll sleep on the bed of one of our women so it will be as homelike as possible.”

On moving day, Booth’s team shows up at the new home in their white lab coats, blue slacks and blue neck scarfs.

Immediate Breakage Report

Wearing a blue apron and red scarf, Booth is also there to receive the furnishings. She stations two women at the door to check off every box before it is brought inside so that none is lost in transit.

If something gets broken in the move, Booth’s team immediately spots it, she said. “Insurance people like us because if anything gets broken, we can notify the driver (of the moving van) right then.”

She likes to keep a good rapport with the movers. “We serve them coffee and doughnuts and try to cultivate friendship. We want them to recognize that we can be good for them, not in competition with them. It helps when everybody works together.”

A devout Christian, she leads her women, who belong to many different faiths, and the movers too if they are inclined, in a prayer for the house.

“We have a joyful time,” she said. “It’s like giving birth to a home. “I get goose pimples all over just thinking about it.”

Unpacking Like Christmas

That might sound funny, considering the fact that Booth got the idea for her company one night after thinking about how awful unpacking can be. Unpacking for herself is so distasteful that after moving to Poway four years ago, she announced that she never wanted to move again. Why? “Because I don’t want to unpack.”

Unpacking for others is different for her, though, she says. “I don’t want to deal with the emotional stress of unpacking my own things, but when I do it for others, it’s like Christmas. It’s fun to get the boxes out of the way so that somebody can nest.”

So far, she has marketed her service to companies handling executive relocations--”to eliminate stress for the businessman, his wife and their children. Children experience a lot of stress in a move,” she said.

She has also marketed her service to gift givers, and last summer, she gave the gift herself to a Tarzana couple she knew who got married. Now she’s thinking of advertising in the Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalogue.

Average Cost $2,000

She also has, as she phrased it, “something cooking” with a large residential developer who is interested in using her service as an incentive for home shoppers to buy. “I’d say $2,000 is not much out of a builder’s pocket to get a client to buy a $300,000 to $500,000 house,” she said.

Two thousand dollars? Booth is reluctant to discuss price, because it can vary so much depending on home size and amount of work involved, she says, but on an average it has cost her clients about $2,000.

“The most we ever charged was $3,500,” she said.

The least? She didn’t say, but a couple of weeks ago, her team moved a woman who had just endured three back surgeries and didn’t have much money for $250.

Helps Elderly, Handicapped

“We don’t like to go out for less than $500,” Booth said, “but we’ll do it for apartments as well as for houses, and we’ll do it for anyone.”

That’s one reason it has taken Booth longer than many small businesspeople to get established, Morris of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce figures.

“Gloria has been willing to take a cut to help the elderly or the handicapped,” Morris said. “She’s gone out with her daughter or a member of her staff and moved people in need.”

Booth just launched what she calls her “seniors relocation service” and claims, “That’s where my heart really is.”

Diagram New Houses

Motivated by her 81-year-old father, who has Alzheimer’s disease, and her 77-year-old mother, Booth and her workers plan to expand their work with older individuals who are moving from larger to smaller homes, she said, and she is expecting to do some jobs for a chain of retirement homes.

“We diagram older people’s new homes, put cutouts of their furniture on the diagrams so they can have some input, help them if there will be an estate sale or recommend storage if we see that they are having trouble parting with something, and then we’ll arrange for the move, clean up their new place and unpack.”

If a grab bar on a bathtub is needed in an old person’s new home, Booth can help, “because we use retired people as handymen.” She often uses retired men to organize garages, “because they know garages better than women.” Her husband, a computer scientist, has even given her a hand on organizing garages and laying vinyl tile.

Mostly, though, she hires women for her jobs and ultimately plans to open a school where she can train women in how to pack and unpack, because she sees a potential demand.

No Standardization

“As it is, there is no standardization in the moving industry,” she said. “The same procedures are used for packing garage stuff as packing crystal.” She would standardize procedures and certify her students for possible employment with moving companies.

Moving companies are paid about $32 an hour per man. An unpacker/packer could work for $10 to $12 an hour, she estimated.

“It would be great for women who want to work part time,” she said, “and it would be great for the moving companies.”

And how would it be for the movers? They could stick to moving, and that is--she claims--what they like best.