Congratulations! You’ve made it through the process of finding a house to make your home. You’ve overcome a major hurdle, and now we are on to the next phase: The Move! At Canden Property Management we want to provide you with helpful information at each phase of the moving process. We hope that you will find some of these tips and tricks beneficial!
As you can imagine, everything begins with organization. What I have come to know after 10+ years in real estate is that people tend to pack sporadically and when they have the most time available - after work, weekends, etc. Since most of us would prefer not to use valuable vacation days for a move, I totally understand this logic, but what tends to happen is that bits and parts of rooms begin to be packed up, but not completed which creates anxiety and frustration.
With that in mind, a few of my most useful recommendations are below along with a few curated resources that will also be helpful.
Best Practices for an Organized Move
- Create a “Must Have” list for each room and corral those items together in a clear storage bin or laundry basket. Example: Kitchen - Coffee pot, mugs, *plastic utensils, *paper plates, etc. (*Using disposable products for the kitchen prior to a move helps you to be able to pack everything up more easily.) Bathroom - Toothbrush, Towel, etc. - every additional product that is not used daily should be packed.
- Create a “First Night” storage bin. This bin should include bedding for each room, toilet paper, toiletries, must have stuffed animals/lovies, and cleaning supplies.
- Decide which room to begin in, typically the room that is used the least, and DO NOT move on to another space until that room is completed. If your boxes are not going to storage, a great hack I found at Martha Stewart was to cut triangle shaped openings in the side of the boxes as handles. *This is a great time to invite friends and family over who are willing to help, you can assign each person a room!
- Once each room has been completely packed, purchase stickers to differentiate each collection of boxes and add them to each box in that room. You can simply purchase neon yard sale stickers and color code and this could be a lot of fun for children and a way for them to be helpful and involved! Example: Child 1 - Frozen Stickers, Child 2 - Spiderman Stickers, Living Room - Pink, Kitchen - Green, etc.
- Create a “map” of your new home with the sticker key so that everyone can easily reference where each box should be delivered.
Photo Credit: Martha Stewart
In addition to the items I’ve prioritized above, I wanted to share this wonderful checklist that I found via the House Mix blog and some useful hacks via Simply Self Storage.
Photo Credit: House Mix blog
Photo Credit: Simply Self Storage
At Canden Property Management we value you and take pride in offering as much information as possible to make your transition into your home as pleasant of an experience as possible.
