Moving Made Easy
Handling Your Own Packing? Do This Before You Start.
Face the Moves
It’s a month before the move, and you haven’t started packing yet. You’re not planning to take more than a few days off work, either. Why are you leaving most of the preparation until the last minute? Your move is not just a matter of packing, removal and unpacking. You know it, but you’re trying to avoid thinking about it, aren’t you?
If you don’t start work now, you’re going to turn the move into a horribly stressful experience, and it will all be because you were afraid to face… the amount of stuff you own, the amount of stuff that needs to be sold or thrown away and the amount of work it’s going to take to do it. Stop procrastinating and face the move. You’ll thank yourself later.
Embrace the Move
If you’re a month or two pre-move, now is the time to put your possessions into order. Maybe you’ll give us a call and ask for a few boxes for early packing, but that’s not the main point. Before you move, you need to confront everything you’ve hidden away and shoved to the back of the closets. Think of it as an opportunity for mental, emotional and spiritual growth.
Plan to blitz your home, including utility areas like the garage and the attic. This is going to take you a significant amount of time, quite possibly including full weekend days of group effort. When it’s time to pack, you don’t want to be stuffing loose papers and unsorted possessions randomly into boxes.
Keep, Sell, Donate, Bin
Everything you own needs to be placed into one of four categories:
- Keep
- Sell
- Donate
- Bin
The things you plan to keep should be cleaned and organised. If you haven’t used something for more than a year, consider donating or selling it. However, don’t discard anything that you have a well justified emotional attachment to. Maybe you’ll never wear that dress again, but if it’s the one you had on when your husband proposed, then go ahead and keep it.
Work out a strategy for books, CDs, DVDs and other media. Will you carry the things you never use with you or leave them behind? Catch up on filing. As much as possible, discard things that you are unlikely to use in the near future. As you accumulate rubbish and items for donation, get them off your property as soon as you can. If you plan to sell things, make it a high priority to get them listed. If you don’t have time, then donate them instead. Be fairly brutal and put in the hours that are needed for proper organisation. If you get well organised before you leave, packing and unpacking will be much quicker, and you’ll breathe easier if you can make a clean start at your new home.