Category: sponsor

This post is sponsored by SimpleHuman. All opinions are my own.

Moving into a new home is so exciting.  Packing up though is the not so fun part.  In addition to buying/selling your house, having to physically pack and move all your belongings is tiring, exhausting and so stressful.

We moved into our new home 2 months ago but we still have a lot way to go to feel completely settled in.  We are still waiting on furniture, we have nothing on walls, we are waiting to paint some walls, etc… It’s an ongoing process.  But one thing that I’m happy about is how much my husband, my daughter and I LOVE our new home.  It’s been an easier transition than I thought to our house in the suburbs after living in the city for more than 15 years but it’s been so great.

Since I just got done with my move, I was able to see what really worked for us.  Here are the top things to do to make moving day easier and less stressful along with some moving day essentials.

Use boxes that are the same shape/size

Collecting boxes from friends/family and packages in the mail are great (and free) but honestly, you will end up will some weird shaped ones, some that may end up falling apart after you’ve loaded them up with stuff and some that might just be dirty.  I didn’t want to deal with that headache so we purchased a few packs of moving boxes and found it to be a great way to keep things organized and stacked neatly.  This really helps when you end up living with boxes for several weeks or even months!

Categorize the boxes

It also helped to keep things organized as we tried to just use certain size boxes for clothes/shoes and certain sizes for stuff in the kitchen as things can tend to get heavy really fast and in some cases, it’s better to keep the large boxes for the items that aren’t going to be too heavy so that it’s easier to move.

 

Label every box and keep a spreadsheet of contents

We hired movers and at the end of our move, they thanked me for having clearly marked labels on our boxes. It really helped them not having to ask me or my husband where every single box went.

I bought these labels and just used Microsoft Word (they have really easy to use templates, just find the brand/style you are using and it’ll populate the template for you) and printed them from our printer.

How to label and organize your boxes

My labeling system also included numbers as I kept a spreadsheet that let me know what each box contained.  So I would have KITCHEN 1, KITCHEN 2, KITCHEN 3, etc… and next to the label would be a general list of contents so after I moved in, I could easily know what was in each box without opening it.  My husband also had access to the spreadsheet so he didn’t have to ask me every single time he went looking for something too.

A peek into my spreadsheet. Yes you guys, I really was that specific.  Haha! Call me crazy but it really did help especially because we moved some boxes over before the official move, so when we were going in between houses, I always knew what we had already moved over. And yes, there’s some random stuff mixed into there like my daughter’s crib sheets obviously don’t go into the kitchen but we ended up using those things as padding for some of the more delicate items in our kitchen.

Hire movers and have a game plan

Professional movers are an expense that I think you should always try to include in your moving budget.  They really know what they are doing as they move people every day and can be fast, efficient and of course strong!

Walk through each room and large pieces of furniture

We also made sure that we were all onboard with how we were going to move things.  We walked through our old house with our movers letting them know which items could go first, which ones to watch out for in terms of being delicate and which furniture items needed to get wrapped/padded before moving. They advised us which items they preferred to move first as well and which items we could put to the side until the very end.

Once we got to the new house, we did a walk through with them and let them know what each room was called, according to my labels (some are obvious like “kitchen” but some like “Baby’s Room” they wouldn’t know unless I told them) That way, they were informed before they started doing all the hard labor of bringing in boxes and furniture

Take your basic necessities/appliances with you

There are some things that movers do not need to take in their moving van. It’s kind of like traveling where there are some things that you can send through checked baggage but some things are just necessary for you to have in your carry on.  Moving is the same in that when you get to your new house, you will be swimming in boxes and unassembled furniture so not searching for these necessities is so helpful for your own sanity.

We made sure to hold on to a few boxes of valuables as well as boxes of necessities that we could take with us in our car.  This includes things like your coffee maker, coffee mugs, dish towels, soap and cleaning supplies.  And don’t forget things like toilet paper and paper towels!

The most basic but essential appliance in your kitchen

One thing that also really helped?  Having garbage cans handy.  It sounds so silly and not something I would have put at the top of my list but honestly, when you move, you also end up with a lot of garbage and if you don’t have a garbage can handy, you end up finding a random bag to put your trash in and it ends up piled up in a corner and not something fun to manage later on.

I got these SimpleHuman Garbage Cans that not only were super handy for our move, but they also went so well with the decor in our kitchen.  I really wanted to find garbage cans that could blend in and not be an eyesore and I’m such a fan of the SimpleHuman designs as they are sleek and modern but also blend in with the decor.

Keep your high traffic areas clutter free

Once we got our boxes and furniture in, we still had to live our daily life and that included being in the kitchen a lot!  It was a pain once I started unpacking and having to move things around or declutter just so I could get some cooking done.  I ended up not allowing any sort of clutter in the kitchen just so I could get through cooking dinner without having to go crazy.

A huge plus was having our SimpleHuman Dishrack.  Once we moved in and started cooking and cleaning, we realized that a lot of things that we had used in our old house just didn’t work in our new house.  And since I needed to make sure that I didn’t have a huge cluster of dirty dishes hanging out everywhere, I made sure that my husband and I were washing and drying our dishes as we used them.  (Our dishwasher was new but there was still an issue with it so we couldn’t use it just yet).

This dishrack is not only simple and sleek – which in itself is pretty hard to come-by with dishracks, I love that it easily drains out the water and keeps your dishes clean and dry.

Moving can be quite stressful and moving day is always a bit crazy with not knowing how things will go. On one of our last moves (before this one), we were scheduled by our movers to be the 2nd move of their day. They ended up being so delayed by their very first appointment , that they ended up showing up 6 hours late for our appointment and I didn’t think they were going to show up at all!  I was freaking out and crying and trying to schedule last minute movers which is next to impossible in a busy city like Seattle.

This move was a lot less stressful due to my tips above (and finding more reliable movers!) and I hope that if you are moving, you find them helpful too!

For more of my home posts, check out my kitchen design and our chic blush pink master bedroom posts.