Moving to a new home is exciting as you start fresh and begin a new adventure. Moving can also be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are 15 tips to help your next move be stree free.
1. Slowly start packing soon after you decide to move. If you are selling your house you will need to remove clutter and personal items to best stage your home anyway so you might as well get started. Set goals that are realistic such as “pack a box a day” or “pack a room a week.” Jojotastic has some great packing tips.
2. Pack things by rooms, label the boxes, and store them together. Design Mom has a great system for labeling and packing boxes.
3. Get rid of things…even furniture. Take the items to their designated places each week. Check out these decluttering tips from Pretty Handy Girl.
4. Sell the items you don’t love or need anymore. If you do this before the move you won’t have to load and unload it and have it waste space in your new home. Here are some great tips for selling furniture on Craigslist.
5. Take pictures of electronics and keep the cords neat. Pack all these things together with the printed out photo. [Photo source: Apartment Therapy]
6. Pack a suitcase of necessities you will need for a week. Do this for every person in your family. Place it where you can get to it first.
7. Pack a box of household necessities. Again, place it where you can get to it first.
8. DON’T paint your entire house before you move. Painting an entire house on a short timeline is stressful. Of course the exception is if you are paying a professional to do it, but most homeowners tackle their own painting. It always takes longer than you think and you will find yourself tired before you move. Give yourself a break, move into your home, relax a little, and then paint your rooms one at a time. Simply Designing has some great tips on how to paint a room like a pro.
9. Pack your truck well. Here is a great diagram to help distribute weight and maximize your space. Broken things create stress so this is important.
10. If you have a little bit of transition between moves consider a POD. If you have to move out but can’t move in immediately, a POD storage is a great option. Load it into the POD one time, schedule it to arrive on move-in day, and unload it one time. Upack has bigger versions of the POD moving storage.
11. Hire a cleaning service for the home that you are leaving. Do yourself a favor…you have a lot of work to do at your new home and the last thing you need to do is spend more time at your old one.
12. Board your pets or ask a friend to take care them. Moving can be stressful for these guys and keeping track of them while doors are open and people are in an out will be stressful for you.
13. Schedule service “turn-off” and “turn-on” in advance for both places a week before you move.
14. After getting your furniture in place, Unpack each family member’s necessities suitcase. Now you don’t feel like you need to live out of a box, and you don’t have to tear up ten boxes to find something you need.
15. Set up your bed first and make it. Now you have a place to crash and get a good night sleep. You will need it you have unpacking to do and new adventures to begin.
Great tips, now just need a way to make moves totally stress free.
I placed a strip of lime-green duct tape on boxes with fragile items. It took less time than writing “Fragile” on all four sides of the box, and everyone could see at a glance which boxes needed careful handling.
Good word Jennifer and thanks for reading and sharing the tip.