5 (More) Moving Tips to Make Life Easier

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I've decided that no matter how organized you are, moving is a pain in the butt. Still, planning and organization goes a long way to making the move easier.

As a follow up to Top 10 Tips for Packing Early for a Move here are five more tips I found helpful.

1. Take notes. Alphabetizing makes me happy, but I knew that as I packed up my CDs, that ABC-order I so love would get a little mixed up in the boxes. To solve this problem, I used paper placeholders to mark the beginnings and ends of shelves within the box. If I opened a random box, all I had to do was look at the first placeholder to tell me where to shelve that stack of CDs. "Shelf 4 begins with Jet," for example.



2. Take pictures. Books are one thing I don't alphabetize. I arrange books by genre and, of course, group books by the same author. Having a picture of my bookshelf before I packed up my books made all the difference. All I had to do was pull it up on the computer and I could glance it at it from time to time to ensure each book went into its designated place.

3. Clean bedding, curtains, rugs, etc. Immediately before the move is the perfect time to steam, shampoo or launder those items that might otherwise arrive at your new house less than pristine. Everything we took down went immediately into the wash. That meant as soon as curtains came off the rods, into the machine they went. While the bed was stripped off all bedding, we went to work vacuuming and steaming it.

Don't forget small appliances and knick-knacks. While I am obsessive-compulsive about organization, I am far more lax when it comes to cleanliness. This means little things like the spice rack, the paper towel holder and the utensil holder don't get cleaned nearly as much as they should. I wanted everything like-new again for the new house, so I spent some serious scrub-time to shine everything up.


Invest in a steamer! It makes a world of difference in keeping furniture clean.


4. Keep handy a portable file tote with any papers you may need in the next month. My move happened to coincide with a whole bureaucratic mess to deal with, so that file tote was my life-saver. It's also a good way to keep coupons in one safe place. I have a large four-drawer file cabinet, but making the file tote my go-to spot for papers just simplified things.

5. Stock up on household essentials and grocery shop for far more food than you think you need -- preferably a variety of easy-to-prepare items. At the end of a long day of moving, running to the store for pack of paper towels or a gallon of milk is the last thing you want to worry about. And easy-to-prepare doesn't have to be frozen. Think fixings for sandwiches, cheese, rice and dry beans for burritos, and fruit and granola bars for quick snacks.

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 27, 2015 at 6:06 PM

    Thanks!!!! I feel like I was reading an article written by me. I really love organizing in the same way you do. I also have a long while to wait until I move. So I decided to get super organized and start preparing early. Thanks for the tips from both your articles.

    ReplyDelete

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