Have you recently bought or sold a house? Congratulations! Now the fun part starts…packing up and moving. Last weekend some of my good friends moved across the country and because it was such a long distance they decided to let to navy move them (you can google this, you have a choice of moves when the navy is involved). When this happens, you aren’t allowed to pack anything in advance or help in any way, which means you basically just spend the day sitting around while professional movers pack up your entire life. It was a fascinating process to see, and I got some tips out of the movers along the way.
- Rushing it: I would say the biggest thing that I noticed about the whole move was how methodical they were with packing and organizing. Every single item was individually wrapped and carefully wedged into boxes. The process took two days, which means for a normal lay person a thorough move should take a week.
- Heavy Boxes: The movers told me that the most annoying problem they have when people pack their own boxes (which is a more regular move than the navy’s which packs and unpacked for you) is that they tend to make every one WAY to heavy. This causes boxes to break and also creates issues with stacking and moving them around. Their tip was to put heavy items in boxes by themselves.
- Disorganization: It goes without saying that if you pack messily it will be that much harder to unpack. I remember my sister moving home from college and having her jeans in the same box as kitchen supplies. Finding anything was such a pain. These movers suggested packing by room, so you can unload the boxes into the appropriate spaces and unpack systematically as you go.
- Poor labeling: This makes the unpacking process such a pain and is so unnecessary. On every box you should write a room and a full list of contents so you won’t be desperately searching for the wine opener the night you get into your new place. Because we all know that wine is very necessary at that point.
