Useful Tips for Preparing and Organising Your Move
If you are planning on moving house, it is never too soon to start preparing. Organising your move is an important part of the process, as it helps you keep all important documents together, get packing done in an orderly fashion and ensure everything is complete by the time the removalists show up. Here are some tips for organising your move.
Keep all packaging items in one room
When you are starting to pack up boxes, it can be frustrating when you are spending half your time searching for an empty box or the packing tape. This is why you should keep all moving and packing items in one room, and make sure your family members do the same. Have a central location where the supplies are kept, so if your teenage daughter starts packing boxes one evening, she knows exactly where to go to get what she needs. When she is done packing, she should put the bubble wrap, extra newspaper, tape, and scissors back in that location.
Have a moving notebook
Part of organising a move has to do with keeping important documents, schedules and notes in a notebook. Start a notebook that will have this vital information, allowing you to keep up with your to-do list and giving your family members a place to check the current status of the move. If you forget whether or not you changed your address yet, you can check the notebook to see if that is checked off. In the moving notebook, include the removalist company's information, including the cost they quoted you and the date and time they are going to show up on moving day. Include a to-do list for things like turning utilities off and having cable transferred. Also, include supplies needed and a list for when to pack certain items.
Start sorting items early
Before you start packing boxes, get organised by knowing exactly what is going to be thrown away, recycled, sold, and packed away. Have everyone go through their own belongings to separate items into piles. Get everything that is to be thrown away out of the house first. Next, put aside items that can either be recycled, donated or sold. If you are downsizing your home, you will also need to decide what furniture and belongings should go into a self-storage unit, and what you can move to your new home. Don't forget to sort items in places like the attic, basement, and crawl spaces as well.
Colour code your moving boxes
Labelling boxes is an important part of the organising process, but it helps to do more than just write the room on the box. You should write the contents of what is inside the box, and then colour-code the boxes. Use stickers with colours on them with certain colours being assigned for certain rooms. So if you have a box that says clothing and it has a red sticker, you know it goes to your bedroom since red is assigned to the master bedroom. If you communicate this information to the removalists as well, they should be able to put your boxes in the correct rooms when they unload, rather than just setting them all down in random rooms.