A few weeks ago I asked for tips on packing and moving and I got some great advice. I thought I'd give a run down of the things that were most helpful to me during our recent move.
- The liquor store is a great place to get sturdy boxes. If you call ahead, they will save them. Just be sure that when you tell the kids, "Load up! We're going to the liquor store!" the 2 yr. old understands she will not be going inside. Otherwise she'll spend the next few days crying, "I WANT TO GO TO THE LIQUOR STORE! YOU NEVER LET ME GO IN THE LIQUOR STORE." This will not make a good impression with the Ladies Bible Class. Trust me.
- I arranged for Salvation Army to make a pick up every Thursday at the same time for several weeks right up until our moving date. This encouraged me to continue purging all items that I was not absolutely in love with, and it made donating those items a breeze.
- I used these Post It page markers to color code my boxes.
I labeled each different color with "garage", "master", "front", "middle", and "back" (meaning bedrooms). I labeled the boxes with the contents and taped the Post It on right under that. I knew I wouldn't be at the new house when the movers were unloading, and this way I knew the movers would know, with just a glance, where to put the boxes. (For kitchen boxes, I just wrote "KITCHEN" in all caps.) - I also numbered the boxes of books. We have LOTS of books and were moving to a house with no built in bookshelves like our old house, so I knew we would have to store many boxes. I began by packing the books I wanted to store first. I numbered these beginning with 1. That way, I knew the boxes with the lowest numbers would be the ones we didn't need to bother unpacking. They would go straight to the garage.
- Possibly the best thing I did, though, was to take all seven kids to the grandparents on the day of the move. We spent the night there while my husband went on to the new house with the movers. That way, there were no hungry, cranky, clingy children under foot during the loading and unloading of boxes. We arrived at our new home the following day to see furniture and appliances all in place.
Those are just a few of the things that worked for me during this move. Moving is never simple, especially with a large family! However, putting those tips into practice certainly made this move manageable.
Be sure to visit Rocks In My Dryer to see more "Works For Me" tips.
8 comments:
Great tips, I especially love the "numbering the book boxes" idea. I just hope I never need to use your suggestions- I hate moving almost more than anything!
Great Ideals. I had to move 2 time in one year. And I was tired I never unpacked allot of out thing. Only what we need.
Great tips.
Great ideas! We just moved here and some of these ideas would have come in handy. :D
#1 made me laugh! That would be sooo embarrassing and not something you would think about either.
Glad y'all made it okay!! Hopefully you won't have to go through this again for awhile! Have you had any more run ins with Chicken Sally?? :)
lol @ the 2 year old wanting to go to the liquor store. i sent my father, who's a greeter at our baptist church. :)
i love the color coded post it idea!
Wow, what an awesome blog. I wish I had these tips years ago when I did my first move. I never even thought of an inventory list. All of my boxes just said “my stuff” and if I really needed to know what it was, the box said “Really important stuff”. Needless to say my unpacking sucked.
Anyways when iwas moving I found this really cool website called Box
That really helped out. Well, back to packing and thanks for the awesome tips!!
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