Tips To Make Your Move Easier

Thousands of people relocate their families every year.  If you have ever picked up and moved to a new location, then you are familiar with the frustrations that come with it.  Even if you are just moving down the street, you can use these tips to help make it easier on you and your family.

Pick a central location for all of your packing needs.  Make sure you have plenty of boxes, packing tape, and markers.  Get some index cards and list every item in detail that you pack into a box.  Label that box with a number and list that same number on the index card.  This way you can always look through the index cards when you need to find a particular item without rummaging through all of your packed boxes.

Create a color coded chart for the rooms in your new house.  For instance, yellow stickers can represent the kitchen, blue for the living room, and green for the master bedroom and so on.  Then put a color coordinated sticker on each box next to its number.  When either you or your movers carry a box into your new house, they will know which room to leave the box.  This will save you loads of time when it comes to unpacking and getting settled into your new home.

For furniture that will need to be disassembled and reassembled at the new house, tape the small pieces, like nuts and bolts, onto the backs of furniture.  This way you won’t lose those important pieces needed to put the furniture back together.  You can do the same with wall hangings.  Tape the nails to the back of the pictures to make it convenient to re-hang things in the new house.

Moving is a great time to clean out unnecessary items.  Go through and pull out clothes, shoes, purses, kitchen utensils and anything else around the house that you no longer use.  You can donate these items to a local charity.  This is also a good time to clean out cleaning products, the kitchen pantry, and the spice cabinet. 

Keep important papers with you that you don’t want to lose like birth certificates or papers/receipts.  You may also want to keep valuable items with you like jewelry and mark boxes containing important items like china or silver as “Misc. Kitchen”.

Have all members of your family pack a box of their personal items and items that they  will need to locate immediately like a set of sheets, a towel, a couple of extension cords, a phone, nightlights, address book, pens and paper, keys, Kleenex, bathroom items, and so on.  Distinguish these boxes from other boxes so that they are easy to locate by using plastic totes instead of boxes or use colored packing tape.

Packing up your belongings and moving it all to a new place is hard work.  Planning ahead will make your move go more smoothly and allow you to quickly turn your new house into your new home.