Get Organized for a Move

An old saying says it best: “Two moves equal one fire.” Few life events short of a fire create as much domestic disruption as moving your household. When faced with a move, it’s easy to feel as if your brain has taken wings and flown away—and it’s even easier to lose your organized way on the road to a new home.

You will need to fight back! A well-organized move can mean the difference between hitting the ground running in your new location and taking months to settle in, unpack, and feel at home. Try these ideas to streamline your next move.

Create a Move Planner

An event as complicated as a move—whether across the street or across the country—requires its own command center. Putting a dedicated move planner into play can make the difference between moving madness and a robust relocation.

Choose your favorite format for your move planner—a three-ring binder, paper planner, or electronic organizer. Your goal is to have all information related to the move in one single, portable package.

At the outset, a move planner needs to incorporate time-management basics: a calendar and master and daily to-do lists specific to the move. Your move planner should remind you of what you need to do and when you need to do it—at a glance.

Having contact information handy is critical during a move, so provide a place for it. Whether you use electronic contact management or tuck business cards into a plastic organizer page, make it easy to stay in touch with all the new best friends you’re going to be making along the way.

Moving generates paper, so make provision for it as well. You’ll want to designate a receipts envelope to corral information for use at tax time. Page protectors safeguard and sort housing applications, repair estimates, and financial paperwork, so add a handful to your move planner.

While moving, keep your move planner with you always. It’ll track notes from meetings and phone calls, record house-hunting impressions, and keep the myriad must-do tasks before your eyes. Don’t leave home without it!

SPEEDY SOLUTION

To decorate a new home, tuck décor items like paint chips, fabric swatches, and flooring samples into the pockets of clear organizer pages made for baseball cards. When shopping for window treatments, you’ll know at a glance whether a given fabric will work with walls and carpet.

Label Everything

Moving is hard enough work as it is, and it’s even harder if you have to shift through a whole stack of boxes to locate the ones holding the sheets and pillowcases. The simple solution to this problem is self-adhesive labels.

Before you begin packing for a move, make a trip to the office-supply store to stock up on standard address labels. They’re cheap and easy to print, and save immense amounts of time during the packing and unpacking processes.

Before packing begins, print or write on two or three sheets of self-adhesive labels each room or area in your home. Include rooms like “kitchen” and “master bedroom,” and add areas like “linen closet” and “storage.”

As you pack, slap an appropriate label on each side of every box. Yes, I said four labels per box! Labeling each side provides instant identification of the contents, no matter how the boxes are stacked and jumbled during the move.

At your new home, post simple signs in each room or area of the house to help labeled boxes reach their new location quickly. This will help your movers get your stuff to the right place the first time.

Pack Me Last

Moving day can be so chaotic that the center of a three-ring circus seems peaceful in comparison. Here’s a method to make moving day simpler, easier, and more organized: the moving-day box.

As you pack, hold back items that will be needed during the first day or two after you move. For example, the vacuum cleaner, a tool kit, and cleaning supplies will be among the first items you’ll reach for in your new home, so pack them last so they’re off the truck as soon as you are.

If children live in the household, set aside a television, a DVD player, and a selection of favorite videos to be accessible right away. It will make it easy to entertain them while you work.

Finally, think past moving day to the first night in your new home. For a good night’s sleep, make sure boxes containing bed linens, blankets, and an alarm clock are among the last boxes in the van. The next morning, will you need the comfort of your favorite coffee mug? Add a box of breakfast basics to welcome the new day on a happy note.

ROAD HAZARD

Don’t pay to transport old clutter to a new home! Keep clutter off the van by routing it out and sending it on its way before you begin to pack.