Packing up and moving is a big life stressor, even if you are happily moving to the home of your dreams! Roughly one in six people move each year, and most people move their residence more than once in a lifetime.

I’ve moved in and out of apartments, townhouses and single-family homes over the years, locally and long-distance and have helped loads of family and friends move. I learned how to make moving easier – or at least less hard!

My experience has taught me some sure-fire tips that will make your next move less of a hassle.

Keep Calm and Carry It With You

Want to save yourself a lot of stress? Set up a planner system that you can carry with you. A regular three-ring binder will work fine. You will need calendar pages, dividers, page protectors, and some pockets.

If you are already a planner person, you can hack an existing planner to fit in sections and pockets for your move. Resist the temptation to spend time decorating the planner sections. You don’t have time to make it Pinterest-worthy, you are getting ready to move!

Have a calendar page for each month between now and your move date.

You can print plain monthly calendar pages from word-processing applications like MS Word.

Working back from the move date, mark dates for canceling services like utilities, newspaper delivery and mail forwarding. Do you have to give notice to your current landlord? Schedule a final inspection? Settlement date for new house? Mark your calendar. Schedule reminders on your phone to check your moving calendar!

Set up a section for your physical move.

Start a supply list! Think of all the things you will need, including boxes, bubble-wrap, tape, and markers.

Make a contact sheet with the name and phone numbers of your mover, real estate agent, storage company, and the like.

• Make notes of every conversation or meeting, with names and dates.
• Use page protectors to hold your moving contract, storage rental agreement, and other important papers.

Include a utilities section in your planner.

Will you need to arrange for gas, electric, water, cable, and trash-pickup? What about lawn or pest-control services?

• Start a separate page for each utility and service you will need at your new home. Include the company name, address and phone number, account number, deposit paid, and service start date.
• Ask for the after-hours emergency number and put it in your planner!
• Keep deposit receipts and business cards in a page protector or manila envelope that is hole-punched to fit in your planner.

Add an appliances and décor section to your planner.

This section is where you will keep the receipts, delivery information and manuals for new or existing appliances you will be taking to your new home like a stove, refrigerator or washer and dryer.

This is also where you will keep your records for carpet installation, interior and exterior painting, and flooring.

Will you be buying or arranging for garage door openers, lighting or a security system? This is the section for those records and phone numbers.

About Those Boxes

You will need a crazy number of boxes, so start early gathering and packing your boxes. If you are sure you have enough – get more!

Do you know of someone else who has recently moved? Ask them for their boxes!

If you or family members work in offices that use a lot of copy paper, ask for the empty boxes. Especially during the warmer months when lots of folks move, clean boxes are a hot commodity, so ask early!

Get to know your local shopping centers, and find out when they set their boxes out back.

Consider purchasing packing boxes from your local storage or truck rental company. It was worth it to me to buy wardrobe boxes so I could take clothes right out of my closets and hang them in the boxes.

I also bought special boxes for our television and mirrors.

I had been able to gather boxes from other sources, and still ended up buying several dozen packing boxes to save time.

Gently used packing boxes can be sold to recover part of your cost. By carefully collapsing the boxes as you unpack, you can sell them to someone else who is moving by word-of-mouth or a post on Craigslist.

Packing it All In

Have a good supply of packing tape, fat markers or labels, and colored stickers or labels. Assign a color to each room of your new home using your colored dot stickers or labels. Put a master list of assigned room colors in your planner.

Special Consideration: Our very first apartment was sweet, cheap and had bugs. When we moved out, I took steps to prevent any six-legged hitchhikers. Every box was taken out to the porch, thoroughly sprayed inside with bug killer, and left to dry before it was packed. Voila! No bugs at the new digs!

Before you pack each box, mark the contents on all four sides of the outside, or slap on labels. Also add a colored dot or label to each side to show the room it will belong in at your new digs.

Trust me, if you have 30 boxes in a stack you do not want to be moving them around in order to see the description of the box you need.

The Big Day

You already have your planner with you, right?

Keep a separate box or big plastic tub separate from the other moving boxes. This is to be hand-carried to your new abode with basic essentials you will need.

Pack this box with toilet paper, paper towels, light bulbs, trash bags, hand sanitizer, cleaner spray and wipes, rubber gloves, a small tool kit and a flashlight. Remember hand soap and shampoo.

Bring your phone and cord if you will have a land-line.

Think about bringing a shower curtain, rod and hooks if your new shower won’t have doors.

Disposable cups, plates, bowls and flatware, aluminum foil and zipper bags are handy, too.

Have another box or bag with clean sheets and blankets for the bed and a set of towels for each person who will be in the house the first night. Keep it in your car so it doesn’t get mixed in with the other boxes.

When the bed is carried into your house, set it up and make your bed first thing. Seriously. You won’t feel like it later after lugging a hundred boxes.

Home Sweet Home!

So there you are. After staggering into a hot shower you collapse on your clean, soft bed. Now you can fall into a peaceful sleep surrounded by piles of lovely, color coded packing boxes.

Are you planning a move this year? Do you have moving stories and tips to share? Please leave your comments below!