4 Tips For a Successful Move

Whether you’re moving for the fourteenth time in your life, or it’s your first time ever, it never really gets easier.  There are always a million more items to pack than you imagined, and seemingly never enough time to get it all done by moving day. Not only is it exhausting, but it can be downright stressful.  

As if that wasn’t enough, hauling and unloading your stuff can lead to all sorts of disasters if you don’t have a careful team of hands alongside you.

The great news is that with a little organization and a few tips up your sleeve, you can pull off a successful move.  Take a look at some of the best pointers to get you through. 

Start As Early As Possible

The minute that you have an idea of when you’ll be moving, you should start preparing for it.  Start going into your house room by room and deciding what you want to keep and what you want to purge.

Initially, it can feel downright overwhelming imagining how you’ll possibly fit it all into boxes.  But by breaking it down into small individual projects that you start well ahead of time, it won’t feel like such a monumental task.

Get Plenty of Supplies

You can forget about using soggy old boxes that have been in your garage for a decade.  In order to make sure that you have a successful move, you’ll need to equip yourself with plenty of high-quality equipment like thick boxes and packing tape.

Although some people buy their own boxes, you can find plenty of high-quality boxes at places like the grocery store or even in your neighborhood recycling bin.  

Pack Lightly

Even though you might be tempted to fit your belongings into as few boxes as possible, this isn’t always the best plan when moving day comes.  Do yourself (and your back) a favor, and keep the boxes under 50 pounds each.

Not only will it make carrying the boxes much easier for you and your moving mates, but it will also make unpacking easier.  Believe it or not, boxes with more items in them make it harder to find things when they’re packed.  However, fewer items in smaller boxes make it easy to dig in a box and find when you need it.

Color Code

A lot of people are familiar with writing the contents of the box on the outside.  For example, labeling everything from your kitchen with “kitchen” on it.  Although this can be helpful, color coding can be even more foolproof.  It’s easier to spot color for each section of your house than reading an entire word. 

4 Tips for Organizing Your Space When You Move Into a New Apartment

No matter what size your apartment is, it's important to keep it organized so that you don't become overwhelmed by clutter. Fortunately, many apartment units offer multiple basic storage areas to help you get started. How you use those storage areas, though, will make a big difference in the overall organization of your apartment. Fortunately, with these areas properly utilized and a few other storage solutions in place, your apartment will feel roomy and look spectacular.

Try Different Arrangements

The arrangement of your furniture is absolutely critical to the success of your apartment's overall organization. Therefore, when you first move in, it's a good idea to try your furniture in different arrangements to see which arrangement makes the best use of the space. Although some rooms will make it quite obvious where certain pieces of furniture should go, there will be other rooms where you can get creative and do some experimenting.

Start With the Unseen Parts

One critical mistake when trying to organize your apartment is trying to organize the common areas without organizing areas like closets and under-bed spaces first. To be able to contain your belongings effectively, these storage areas need to be carefully organized from the beginning to ensure that everything else falls into place. If you don't have exactly what you need to get these areas organized, it's okay to drop what you're doing and run to the store to ensure you can start your organization on the right foot.

Double-Check Every Box

As you begin to unpack, it's a good idea to go through every box to ensure it ended up where it was supposed to be. While your moving company will work hard to place boxes where they're needed, there's always a chance that you mislabeled a box, causing it to end up in the wrong room. By searching through all of your belongings at the start, you will make sure that you don't get a space organized only to later discover a large number of items that also belong in that space and have to be integrated into the available storage.

Create a "Maybe" Pile

During the unpacking process, you're likely to come across some items that you packed "just in case" you would need them in your new apartment. In many cases, though, you'll find that these items are totally unnecessary. Therefore, to prevent these excess items from cluttering your apartment, create a "maybe" pile of items that aren't likely to stick around. Then, when your apartment is completely organized, take one last look through the "maybe" pile and then get rid of everything that doesn't have a home.

A key to properly organizing your new apartment is to stay focused. In other words, do your best to complete one room before you begin working in another room. Assuming that your belongings are in the rooms where they belong, you won't have a lot of back and forth that will slow you down. Therefore, by staying focused, you allow everything to find its perfect place without being distracted by all the work that's left to be done.

Guest Post - Top Money-Suckers to Repair or Replace When Moving Into a New Home

It's hard to match the euphoria that accompanies the purchase of a new home. That euphoria can quickly be replaced with disappointment, though, if certain items around your home begin to suck up all of your available cash. That's why it's important to take action right after you move in so that you can take care of these money suckers once and for all.

Poor Insulation

A lack of insulation in your home's attic is easy to overlook during the homebuying process. After all, many attics can be difficult to access, and a lack of insulation isn't something that would cause immediate concern for a home inspector. If you don't have enough insulation in your attic, though, you could experience mounting utility bills as your home loses valuable conditioned air. Therefore, after you move in, have your home inspected by a qualified insulation installer to see if any changes need to be made.

Old HVAC System

You can tell a lot about someone by the way they maintain their HVAC system. Unfortunately, you may move into your new home to find that the previous owners didn't put much stock in proper HVAC maintenance. Typically, this means that your HVAC system will operate inefficiently, causing high utility bills and potentially expensive repairs. That's why AC repair and maintenance is one of the first things you'll want to address after you move in so that any lingering problems don't have a chance to cause major disruptions.

Toilet

If the previous homeowner wasn't living in the home when you took a tour, it's likely that the water to the toilet was turned off. Unfortunately, with the water off, it's easy to hide problems, such as toilet leaks, that can lead to major water bills down the road. Not long after moving in, it's a good idea to run a dye test on your toilet. By putting ten drops of food dye into the supply tank and leaving it overnight, you'll be able to spot any leaks that need to be repaired.

Light Bulbs

Although LED light bulbs are more affordable than ever, there is a good chance that you'll come across at least some incandescent light bulbs when you move into your new home. To help lower your electric bill, it's important to replace these light bulbs as soon as possible. Make sure that you check each fixture for wattage limits so that you don't accidentally cause the fixture to overheat.

With so many different items to look into after you move in, it's wise to create some type of checklist. This ensures that you can take care of essential items as you find time instead of trying to do everything at once. Then, when your checklist is complete, you can be sure that your home is operating as efficiently as possible.

Author Bio:

Meghan Belnap / Blogger, Researcher and Freelance Writer
Meghan Belnap is a freelance writer who enjoys spending time with her family. She loves being in the outdoors and exploring new opportunities whenever they arise. Meghan finds happiness in researching new topics that help to expand her horizons. You can often find her buried in a good book or out looking for an adventure. You can connect with her on Facebook right here and Twitter right here.

3 Tips For Staying Organized When Unpacking After A Move

While packing up your home during a move can feel pretty disorganized, it’s the unpacking after you’ve moved when you really need to focus on getting your organization in place. If you fail to get things organized when you first bring them into your new house, it’s going to be much harder to reorganize everything at a later date.

Knowing this, it’s worth it to spend some time and effort planning how you’ll pack and unpack when you move. To help you with this, here are three tips for staying organized when unpacking after a move. 

Finish A Room Before Starting On A New One

When you were packing, hopefully you labeled all of the boxes or storage containers you were using to move your stuff. With proper labeling, you should know which room each box is supposed to be in for unpacking.

As you unpack your boxes, Diane Schmidt, a contributor to The Spruce, advises that you get one room completely unpacked before you move onto unpacking in another room. By doing this, you’ll ensure that each room gets settled as you move through the house and you don’t have any half-done projects that you begrudging have to come back to later. And, if you find something that needs to be housed in a different room, simply bring it into that room and wait to find it’s new home until you start unpacking that particular room. 

Plan Out Your Kitchen Before Unpacking

One room that you’re going to have to be very strategic about when unpacking is your kitchen. When a kitchen isn’t correctly organized, the entire workflow of that space can be very negatively impacted.

Before you begin unpacking any of your kitchen boxes, Marian White, a contributor to Moving.com, shares that you should first plan out how you’ll use and move through your kitchen. Find which items will make the most sense in which locations so you don’t have to keep shuffling things around as you empty out more of your boxes. This will help you to save time and sanity, both now and later.

Give Everything A Place

While you were packing up your home, you likely found yourself getting rid of things that you didn’t need to make the move with you into your new home. And although you might have thought that you pared down enough, once you’re unpacking in your new home, you might find that some things that you brought with you don’t have a logical place in your home.

From an organizational standpoint, Tara Mastroeni, a contributor to MyMove.com, shares that everything should be given a place to permanently be stored. And if that place doesn’t exist, keep that item in the box you packed it in until you figure out either where to put it or decide to donate it to someone else. 

If you’re going to be moving soon, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you stay organized as you unpack in your new home.