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How To Streamline Your Packing For Moving To A New House
Are you moving house soon?
Moving to a new house is not a task for the faint of heart, and the aspect of moving that is the most frustrating and stressful is the actual packing of the boxes. Fortunately, there are ways of streamlining the packing process to make the act of moving to a new place even the slightest bit more palatable.
This article is here to give you nine winning strategies to make packing your stuff to move a smoother, if not even slightly enjoyable, experience.
Calculate And Maximize Space
Do the math ahead of time to determine how many boxes you will need for all of your stuff. And if possible, use packing cubes or vacuum bags to help maximize space inside the boxes themselves. You can usually estimate how many moving boxes you need by looking at your home and its contents.
There are even packing calculators that can help you determine exactly how many boxes you’ll need in your packing so that you won’t find yourself overrun with empty boxes. And in a way, having just the right amount boxes in itself ought to be enough to ease a certain amount of stress during the moving process.
Organise Your Stuff Before The Move
It’s not just enough to pack the right number of boxes in just the right way. You would do well to ensure that boxes and their unpacked contents are staged with other like objects. For example, kitchen items should go with other kitchen items as much as is possible, and even then, put the fine china plates with the other highly fragile objects.
In another illustration, it’s a bad idea to mix up your pet’s belongings with human stuff. Putting these very different things has the potential to be stressful for you and even dangerous for your pet. So always make sure that like objects stick together as much as you can.
Clear labelling and colour coding can be effective ways of keeping boxes organized.
Pack One Room At A Time
One way to ensure that similar items stay together as much as possible is to approach your packing project on a room-by-room basis. It’s easiest to start with the rooms that you may not frequent every day, like your study or the basement. The less-visited rooms can be packed up a month or two beforehand, with the “more important” rooms able to be packed up closer to the moving date. Once again, the organisation is key.
Get Rid Of Clutter Beforehand
Decluttering before moving house. An overlooked benefit of packing to move is that it allows you to see exactly how much stuff you’ve been holding onto over the years. And if you don’t want the sheer volume of clutter to overwhelm you while you’re trying to pack those final few boxes, it may behove you to get rid of some of the things you no longer need in the weeks and months even leading up to the move.
Donating unneeded clothing and other objects is a good way of both getting rid of the clutter in your house and also doing a good deed to help someone else. You may also be able to make use of consignment shops and online marketplaces, such as Facebook Marketplace.
We have a helpful post on how to declutter before moving to a new home and we hope it will help you to get started on decluttering your possessions before the big day of your move.
Get Some Help
This tip comes near the middle of our list, but it is actually one of the most important. There are entire companies whose sole purpose is to help pack and move your belongings. Check local listings for a reputable moving service.
Know The Rules
And should you hire a reputable moving service, it’s helpful to get familiar with their terms of service. There are certain things that moving companies won’t be able to move, so getting to know their policies will help you prepare for which parts you’ll have to pack yourself.
Minimize Distractions
A simple way of streamlining the packing process is to allow yourself space and time to fully concentrate on the task. So it may be worth putting the cat in a separate room, making sure the dog stays in the yard and sending the kids off to a babysitter’s house for a bit while you focus on packing. Not only will you be able to concentrate more, but having no pets or kids around also minimizes the risk to those pets or kids who might get in the way and get hurt when objects are getting moved.
And as long as we’re talking about distractions…it’s a good idea to leave the TV off and put the phone away. It’s surprising how quickly time can get away from you if you stare too long at a screen.
Give Yourself Time
As with most large undertakings, it will ultimately be easier and less stressful if you begin sooner rather than later. Begin thinking about what things you can pack away and how many boxes you might need even as far as six months in advance of the “crunch time.” The longer you involve yourself in the business of considering, staging, packing, and moving your stuff, the more streamlined and less stressful the last bits of packing will be just before the move.
Double Check Everything
Thinking you’ve successfully packed everything only to realize that you’ve forgotten something altogether – or perhaps worse, that a box you swore you packed was poorly sealed and something fell out or broke – is perhaps the most stressful packing scenario.
Avoid this nightmare by making sure that all boxes are clearly labelled and well secured. And even if you think you’ve gotten everything, take one last look around. It may be a good idea to have one separate box for any “stragglers” you may come across.
A Final Word
Packing to move into a new place is almost unavoidably stressful, but there are many actions you can take to make it more streamlined and even slightly more palatable. Indeed, if you follow the nine pro tips we outlined above, you’re going to be pleasantly surprised at how much smoother your packing experience will be.
If you are planning a house removal in Portsmouth and would like some expert advice on packing your belongings, please do not hesitate to contact Curtiss & Sons on 023 9298 5830, our friendly team is here to assist you with your enquiry.
