Moving can be stressful and there is a lot that can go wrong. The key to making your move easy and stress-free is to plan ahead. By taking stock of everything that is going to be packed, thrown out, or sold off, you will be prepared and a lot more relaxed.
Keeping an inventory of your items and making a schedule for the move will help you out more than you know. Being prepared is half the battle.
While you are getting organized and working out your moving plan, check out these tips that can make your moving day go a lot smoother.
1. Use plastic lunch bags
When you start disassembling your furniture and other large items, you are going to end up with a lot of screws and washers. Keep all of these together in plastic lunch bags so that you know where to find them later.
There is nothing worse than losing one of the screws necessary for reassembling the TV stand. Keeping them all together in one place will make your life a lot easier and take some of the stress out of unpacking later.
You can also keep other small things in lunch bags like pens, coins, important documents, and medicine.
2. Defrost your fridge
Make sure to start defrosting your fridge a day or two before moving day. This way you will avoid all sorts of nasty smells and leaks that might make moving it very unpleasant.
Eat all of your perishable food in the week leading up to the move. You don’t want to take frozen steaks and cartons of milk with you when you move. Plan on taking only canned and dry goods. Eat or give away everything that is fresh and frozen.
This might seem unnecessary, but in case things go wrong somewhere, you don’t want food spoiling in your car or moving truck. The smell is awful and there is really no good reason to bring food with you.
3. Pack clothes in garbage bags
If you want to make clothes packing really easy, slide all your clothes hangers together and tie them together in sets of ten. Then slide a garbage bag over each set of ten pieces of clothing. How easy is that?
When you get to your new place, you can just hang everything up, remove the garbage bags, and untie them.
Everything will be hanging neatly and there is no need to work out where everything will go. Your clothes will be arranged exactly as they were in your old house.
4. Use T-shirts as wrapping
A great way to pack breakable items is to wrap them in T-shirts. You can wrap up plates and dishes with shirts so that you don’t have to buy bubble wrap.
If you have a lot of fragile items then packaging material can get quite expensive. Don’t waste your money.
You have to pack your clothes anyway, so use whatever you can to pack your breakables.
5. Cover liquids with plastic
If you are bringing bottles of liquid, you will need to take measures to avoid leaks and explosions. All it takes is for someone to place a heavy box on top of your shampoo bottles and they are bound to burst during the trip.
Avoid accidents by removing the lids from the bottles, covering the bottles in plastic wrap, then replacing the lids. This will keep the liquid inside secure and avoid making a mess.
You can use this method for any liquid such as cleaners, bleach, soaps, and mouthwash. If you have a bottle that doesn’t have a removable lid or is an unusual shape, you can still cover the whole bottle in plastic wrap.
For smaller bottles, you can place them together in a plastic lunch bag.
6. Cut handles into your boxes
You will, no doubt, be moving a lot of boxes. You are likely to get a sore back and bashed fingers over the course of moving day.
You can make it easy on yourself by cutting handles into your boxes. Just small rectangles about halfway down each end of the box will do.
You don’t want to cut big holes or you may ruin the integrity of the box. It’s no good trying to make things easier if your box falls apart while you are carrying it. As long as you keep the holes small they will be fine.
Use a hobby knife of a box cutter. Don’t use scissors unless you have hands of steel.
Taking the time to cut handles will make moving day go a lot faster and easier.
7. Use a rubber band to keep the door from locking
You will be going in and out a lot on moving day. Most of the time, you will have something in your hands, so you won’t have a hand free to open the door.
Worse still, you may accidentally get locked out if the door slams shut.
According to CaliforniaMoversUSA you can easily prevent this from happening with a simple rubber band. Just loop the rubber band over one of the door handles. Then stretch it around to the handle on the other side of the door. Twist it and loop it around the other door handle. It should make an X over the locking mechanism so it can’t stick out.
This way the door will never lock even if it closes. If it does close while your hands are full, you can just kick it open with your foot.
8. Make use of disposable plates
If you have any disposable plates, you can use them to pad out your dishes. Just stack your ceramic plates alternately with the disposable plates.
This will protect the ceramic plates so they don’t get chipped. Styrofoam plates will work best as padding but thick cardboard ones will work too.
Even if you don’t have any disposable plates lying around, if you have expensive ceramic plates, you might consider buying some. Disposable plates are inexpensive and it can be worth buying some to protect your good plates.
Nicola Holder 