Moving does not have to be difficult. In fact, it can be a great opportunity to simplify your life. When else do you put your hands on every single item in your home, other than when packing up your belongings to move? As you pull your books and dishes and linens from their cabinets, ask yourself, “Do I really need this item?” If the answer is no, set it aside to donate to charity. Do this in every room of your home, and you’ll have much less to move to your new place. Read on for five more quick and easy moving tips:

1. Do a little at a time. If you tend to power pack over one or two weekends, reconsider your strategy. If you have enough of a heads-up, start six weeks out and pack for an hour or two every weekend. Start with the rooms you use least, such as a guest room if no visits from the in-laws are on the horizon. With each room you complete, your stress level will lower, leaving you with only the most difficult and most used rooms to pack right before the big day. For example, you won’t want to pack up your kitchen until the weekend before your move, and you won’t want to start your home office relocation until the day before if you work from home.

2. Hit the liquor store. Wine and other liquor boxes are perfect for packing up your kitchen items. They come with dividers that allow you to pack breakables such as glasses and vases without having to layer them loosely within a box, which more often than not leads to at least one item per box breaking during transit, especially if international moving is part of your plan. Some of the big-box liquor stores even place boxes behind the store so customers can easily obtain them.

3. Label your boxes. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Not necessarily. First, do not label each box with the items inside. Doing so takes too much time, and do you really want to advertise that your Blue-Ray player is in a particular box. Not that you shouldn’t trust your long distance movers, but what about a passerby who sees a stack of boxes in your driveway and no one to stop him from quickly grabbing one? Simply label each box with the room the movers should put it in.

4. Pack a suitcase. This allows you to arrive at your new home and not hunt for necessary items. Place in the bag everything you need for your first night: toilet paper, medications, toiletries, something to sleep in and anything else you might need or want to have without having to open boxes. Also, empty a couple of drawers in your dresser and place in them bedding and pillows.

5. Let the long distance movers do what they do best. For example, let the movers disassemble your beds and reassemble them in your new home. They have the proper tools handy and can do in minutes what it would take you much longer to do.

View all flatrate's articles

---

About the Author:
Julie Jacobs covers the home and garden beat, which includes offering tips for home and office relocation. She recently moved and followed these five tips. Julie can’t wait to put them to use with international moving but has yet to get a job offer in her dream country of France.

More Real Estate articles