How to Pack for a successful move

I love moving. I know, that’s not really normal 🙂 Most people hate it. I suspect it’s my Mother’s fault. She also liked to move and we didn’t stay in the same house for too long. I always think it’s funny when people talk about their “forever home” that is a concept that did not exist in my house. More like Onward and upward! Here are some of the reasons why I love to move:

Why I Love Moving:

• You get that  really deep clean that you can only get in an empty house
• It’s the perfect opportunity to declutter and get rid of things you don’t need
• It gives me an excuse to go shopping for new furniture and accessories!!!!
• It provides new renovation and home improvement projects 🙂

Get the Right Supplies

If you want to pack for a successful move you will need  the proper supplies. Usually you have a couple of months to pack up. Take the time to declutter and purge on this end. It doesn’t make sense to move a bunch of stuff that you are just going to throw out once you get to your new place. Be brutal. I am not a person who gets overly sentimental about most things. If you don’t love that green vase that your great aunt gave you – don’t keep it. Donate it to charity, and someone who really does love it, can enjoy it. Keeping things out of guilt is a bad idea, guilt has no place in your decor.

 

The right supplies will make all the difference. This will make the job so much easier. You can click on any of these images to shop. Don’t use newspaper to pack your valuables, it’s dirty. Buy packing paper it comes in nice sized pre-cut ink free sheets. Think about it, you are paying thousands of dollars in real estate fees, what’s a hundred or  dollars on packing supplies? Click on the images for shopping info.

Boxing Day

Same train of thought for boxes. Don’t waste your time, going to a bunch of stores picking up used produce or liquor boxes. Buy proper packing boxes. They are clean and properly sized. This will also make it easier for your movers if all the boxes are uniform sizes, and they will stack easily. For my 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo I bought a bundle of 30 medium sized boxes, which are 3 cubic feet And a bundle of 24 small boxes which are 1.5 cubic feet. You don’t want to use the bigger boxes for anything heavy like dishes or books. They will run you about $1/box if you buy them by the bundle. WORTH IT! Plus, most places will let you return unused boxes if you keep your receipt. Nice!

Plan for Easier Unpacking

Another thing that I like to do is number the boxes and list the items that you.packed. It’s a bit of extra work, but will be worth it when you are sitting in the middle of your new house looking for the coffee pot, somewhere in the 10 boxes labelled kitchen 🙂 You might only need to list by cupboard; i.e.: Spice cupboard, Tupperware etc. The boxes that I used, have a nice little designated space for listing the contents

Colour me Organized

The other thing that is super helpful to you and your movers is to colour code your boxes for which room/area they are going to. In the past I once did this with coloured post-it notes – BAD IDEA! Post it notes fall off, and unless you post them to every possible side, they will not be easy to find when the boxes are stacked. This tape works so much better. Wrap it around your box, so you can see it when they are stacked, and so can the movers.

Do up signs for your new home. The boxes may be labelled spare bedroom, or guest bedroom, but if you have a 4 bedroom house, this will not be intuitive to the movers. And you don’t want to stop mid move to read the contents of the boxes. Make it easy for the movers by labeling the rooms, and also colour coding them with the same colour as the corresponding box tape, So blue  tape on the boxes and a big blue sheet of paper on the entrance to the room that they go in. Or use the blue Packing  tape, just make sure it doesn’t peel the paint off your door – that would suck!

It’s a Wrap!

If you are packing to a storage locker or U-pak,  or just for better use of space, you will want to break things down wherever you can. For tables and coffee tables you can probably remove the legs and this will make packing and/or storing much easier. All of those IKEA items come apart. Remember they came in a flat box, and you had to put them together. I flat-packed everything that I could.

This packing Stretch Wrap is THE BEST. It keeps all of the pieces together and protects things too. I used it to wrap up the diamond tufted headboard that I made to stage Greg’s Master Bedroom. Go with the wider roll, otherwise it takes FOREVER to wrap something up with a 5″ wide roll.

 

Floor Plans

One other thing that you can do to make it easier (and faster, and cheaper) for your movers. Take a floor plan of your new place and make a large copy of it. Most real estate listings have floor plans done up for them. Then colour in the rooms to the corresponding tape colour that you used on your boxes. Alternatively you can number the rooms, and number the boxes the same. This will make it much easier for the movers to know where everything goes, without having to ask.

And my very best piece of advice to you is this:

Hire Professional Movers!

Even if you are 20, and you have a lot of friends who will move you for pizza and beer. The cost of the pizza, beer, and damaged furniture, not to mention strained friend ships, is not worth it. I have been using professional movers for years. It is money well spent!! I can’t attest to what it will cost you to move, but my moves have generally run me about $400-$500 dollars. Our rates locally tend to run about $80 – $100/hour, for 2 men and a truck. You’ll want to check around for a couple of quotes. I think will all of the fees you end up paying when you move it’s a comparatively small price to spend a bit to make what can be a very stressful day run as smoothly as possible.

There you have it, Now go and pack!! (and call the movers)

Note this post may contain affiliate links. I may receive a small commission at NO ADDITIONAL cost to you! Click here for my full disclosure

 

 

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