October 8, 2020

7 Steps to Start Packing for a Move

I may be the minority when I say that this is my first real move. Like taking everything in my life from one place and moving it to another. I don’t think college counts. Even then I would fill garbage bags and laundry baskets with a whole lot of nothing that I thought was very necessary.

Wait, I skipped a step. When I was five years old my parents purchased the home they still live in. Obviously, I don’t remember that process though. Skip to college again where I lived away from home part time and moved right back in when I graduated. A few years later, I married my husband and moved into his parent’s mother-daughter-apartment. He was in grad school at the time and my teaching salary wasn’t much, so it was the best decision for our circumstances.

Even during this move, I left half of my belongings with my parents (which they have tried to get rid of for the past six years). And after being married and in our own space, we accumulated a lot of stuff! Now that I’m packing it up it seems like even more stuff than I remember…

Now this is the real thing. I’m writing this while I am in the process of packing. Another perk of my situation is that we are doing some minor renovations on the home we purchased and we don’t have to leave our apartment at a specific time. So, I am very thankful that I am void of that level of stress.

Anyway, I’m going to share my very amateur process with you in a few steps, pretty much as I do it, in hopes that it will help someone figure things out in their own moving process. But, I am clearly not an expert in any form.

Step 1:

Collect boxes from friends, grocery stores, facebook marketplace etc.

Step 2:

Create an excel spreadsheet with the following column titles- box number, room, contents, fragile*, non-essential* (**these are check boxes so I just check them if it applies to the specific box)

Step 3:

Remove all decor from walls, shelves etc. and place it on the floor or table where you can see it all

Step 4:

Get rid of as much as you can! Toss those out of style frames and ugly candle holders you never really use

Step 5:

Start boxing- number the box and describe contents in excel spreadsheet (Example- 2 Living Room picture frames, curtains, candles and check the fragile and non-essential boxes)

Step 6:

After decor, move on to bookshelves or closets/basement etc (I had things like winter sports gear, craft supplies, bags/purses etc that I wouldn’t need for a while)

Step 7:

Repeat steps 4-5

So far, it’s helping me to number boxes and have a coinciding description so instead of opening every single box, I can check what is in it and decide if I really need it immediately. There are already so many non-essential boxes! Makes me wonder…why do I have half of this stuff? Maybe I’ll get rid of more when I reach the unpacking process.

Again, this is stage one! Lord only knows how many stages there will be or how the unpacking will go. Hopefully the move will happen within the next few weeks! I also hope I can continue being this organized, but that will be a challenge too. The good part is, as with many things, starting is the hardest part, right?