Moving, ugh. Nobody enjoys it, but it’s a necessary, time-consuming evil that includes packing your stuff into boxes and hoping nothing breaks or spills. It doesn’t have to be that way though. We asked the best moving companies to share their top tips that’ll make packing and moving your things a lot easier, and as crazy as it sounds, fun.
1. Pack for a short stay
It’ll take some time for you to settle into your new apartment, so packing a weekend bag filled with your essentials to last several days is important. Throw in toothbrushes, clean clothes, medication you might need, and your laptop. This will make your first few nights in your new home as comfortable as possible, especially since you’ll want to shower and change into fresh clothes after all that sweating from moving. And because these essentials are waiting for you in your overnight bag, you won’t have to hunt through boxes just to find them.
2. Color me organized
When buying your packing supplies, get several different colors of tape or sticky notes. Use them to color code your boxes and containers according to the new room in which you’re going to put them. For example, use blue tape on all boxes that go in the kitchen and green tape on all boxes that go in the bathroom.
3. Take pictures
Keep a camera or your phone handy. Take pictures of items that you want to put in spots that are similar to the ones in your old apartment, such as the paintings and photo collages you’d like to hang on your living room walls. If you’re renting, be sure to also take pictures of your old apartment after you’ve emptied and cleaned it. This helps you avoid disagreements with your landlord so you can get your security deposit back.
4. Roll your reading materials
Stacks of books and magazines can get heavy. Put them in rolling luggage to making moving them a cinch.
5. See clearly
Place all of the things that you’ll need immediately in a clear plastic bin. This includes utensils, power outlet strips, phone chargers, toilet paper, and tools for assembling your furniture. Packing this stuff in clear storage containers makes them stand out from the dozens of other boxes and bins.
6. Seal potential messes
Don’t want your toothpaste, shampoo, and conditioner to spill everywhere? Remove their caps, place plastic wrap over their openings, and then secure them by putting the caps back on. Gooey moving box problem solved.
7. Protect your glassware
Protect your glasses and stemware by filling them with crumpled packing paper and wrapping them, especially their fragile stems, in bubble wrap. After you place your glassware inside a box, fill any empty spaces with packing peanuts or crumpled newspaper to prevent them from knocking into each other during transit.
8. Bag it
Sandwich bags are awesome for storing your, well, sandwiches. But they’re also invaluable tools for storing non-edible, important pieces while moving. For example, when you disassemble a piece of IKEA furniture, drop its screws, cam-lock nuts, washers, and other small pieces into a sandwich bag. Then duct tape the bag to the furniture piece it belongs to, or to the inside of a box that’s going to the same room so that every piece is right where they belong — with their siblings.
9. Pack in place
When moving, the more things that you can leave in their places, the less you’ll have to unpack later. If you want to save time by leaving your clothes inside your dresser while you move, seal the tops of the dresser’s drawers with plastic wrap to stop your clothes from spilling out.
10. Pack closets in a flash
Contractor trash bags are big and tough, which makes them perfect for transporting your shirts without taking them off their hangers. You can pack your entire closet in mere minutes just by doing the following:
- Cut a small hole in the middle of a contractor trash bags’ sealed end
- Pull the clothes (with them still on hangers) up through the bag’s open end
- Slip the hangers’ hooks through the bag’s hole at the top
And just like that, your closet is packed and your clothes are protected from dirt.
Pull the clothes (with them still on hangers) up through the bag’s open end, and then slipping the hangers’ hooks through the bag’s hole at the top. And just like that, your closet is packed and your clothes are protected from dirt.
Keep these 10 easy packing tips in mind for your next move, and you’ll find that moving into a new apartment doesn’t have to be so stressful after all.
This article was written by Unpakt, a price comparison website that helps you quickly find and book a guaranteed price from reputable moving service providers in your area.
