Friday Five: Moving Tips!

Trying to facilitate a move is quite an intimidating venture. I spent 3 days organizing and re-organizing piles of things just because the thought of packing everything up was overwhelming. How do I organize? How to I track? How do I pack? Finally I just told myself to start putting the piles into boxes and it would all work itself out. Fortunately that did the trick for me and I was able to get my act together. Here are a few tips that helped me stay motivated and organize.

1) Start with a To-Do list
As simple as it sounds write down everything you need to do. I chose to do it by room in my apartment and wrote down things as simple as 'pack up Kitchen Aid mixer'.  It was a bit redundant but to see all the tasks in front of me was super helpful. In the moments I was so overwhelmed with everything I just made myself pick one of the things on my list  and that got me started.

2) Schedule out your time
This was a technique I used in college when I had a lot going on. In addition to dealing with the task of packing, cleaning and shipping my entire life. I had people I needed to see and things on bucket list to do. My last week was jam packed. I took my to-do list and scheduled out hourly blocks to get the items done {literally everything from getting coffee to painting the walls}. It took thinking out of the picture and really allowed me to just enjoy the moment.

3) Think about how you want to unpack
In San Francisco I lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with a roommate. Things weren't always kept where they 'should' be. I kept my Kitchen Aid Mixer and Ninja Blender in my closet for example. I knew that ideally those would go in my next kitchen so as I packed up my kitchen stuff I pulled those out. Also worked with some bathroom supplies. I keep lotion and hair tools in my room, but pulled them out when I packed up my bathroom things.

4) Create an Inventory
As I sorted through the last 7 years of my life in the typical keep, sell, goodwill piles I recorded everything I put in a box and which box I put it in. This helped me determine insurance for each package as well as serve as a helpful key to finding things when you just too exhausted to unpack a whole box. I used towels and sheets to help pad various breakables too, so they found themselves in several different boxes. I used GoogleSheets, so I could access it from my phone and computer. It was also easily shareable with my parents whom I sent some boxes for storage too.

5) Pick out Necessities
One of the lists that I made was all the items I would 'need' when after everything is packed up and shipped. Including clothes, toiletries,  tools and cleaning supplies. I pulled them all aside before I started packing boxes so I didn't have to make that decision as I was going.