How to Move a House

Moving is never a pleasant experience. A little bit of forethought, and some expert labeling can make both packing, and unpacking, just that tiny bit easier. After all, getting the house is stressful enough!

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Packing Tape
• Thick black markers
• Packing boxes, various sizes
• Newspaper
• Packing peanuts
• A house full of stuff to move
• An empty house to move into

1. When you know you're going to move, there's no saying you can't start packing, even if you don't have a house to unpack everything in yet. Start walking through your house and finding all the items you don't mess with on a daily basis. Chances are, if it's got a layer of dust an inch thick, then you don't use it, and it can be packed away.
2. Go to your local department or grocery stores, and ask them to save the packing boxes they get from unpacking dry goods they receive. More often then not, they'll break them down, and if you get to them early enough, they wont be that damaged. It's an easy way to save money on moving expenses, for boxes cost a LOT of money.
3. Your local moving companies normally sell packing supplies like boxes in a package set. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can get packing tape too. You'll need one other essential item, thick black markers, and you've got your basic packing needs.
4. If you've got a linen closet, start there first. Sort through the blankets, sheets, and towels. Again, sort based of what you need to get by, and what you use on a common basis. If you haven't touched a towel in two months, then it's safe to say you can pack it away. If you've got sheets that haven't seen the light of day in years, pack em. Reduce the amount of volume and when it comes down to crunch, you'll have that much less to pack.
5. Here's a neat trick. Using the extra items from your linen closet, wrap breakable items (figurines, platewear, glasses, pictures) in the sheets and blankets. It's an awesome way to keep your items fagiles safe, save money on packing material, and you pack away two sets of items at once.
6. Start small. Pick a room at a time, and dont cross-pack a room. If you run out of stuff to put in a box, leave the box tucked in a corner of the room, or in the closet, until it gets closer to actual moving time.
7. Label. Label. LABEL. Use the black marker extragavantly. Label all the sides of the boxes, and the top. Don't try to go for some sort of secret code to save space and time, for, guaranteed, in a month you wont remember what A1B267 means. Be clear, and blatantly simple. If it's the bathroom cabinet that your children use, then say so!
8. Another trick when labeling is mark the urgency of the box. If its something you packed before you even knew you had a house, then mark the box for storage. If you didnt need it in the old house, sure as shooting you aren't going to need it in the new house. Most packing boxes come with a row of lines for you to place basic content lists on. If you've got decorations packed away, use a generic description for the decorations, so you can find them easily later if you need them.
9. If you've got a fully stocked house already, and no room to stack boxes without feeling like you're living in the Land of the Stepping Stones, then consider renting a storage unit, or PODS-like service on a temporary basis. This can help with your final move, especially if you rent a PODS-like service, as they can just pick up the PODS and move it when you're ready, and its one less thing you need to worry about transporting.
10. As you start running out of packing material from your linen closet, consider moving to newspaper. It's a great medium for protecting breakables, and you can get it super cheap. As a last resort you can use packing peanuts, but they take up so much volume, and are so expensive, they're almost not worth it.
11. As the time comes to actually move your house stuff, try to keep the boxes organized by room. Load each room into the truck by the boxful, so that you can stick to an easy unload. This way you know where each box goes, and you're not wandering all over the house from room to room trying to unload the truck.
12. Move the big stuff first. Load the sofas, beds, tables, and any large furniture. Why? Because its the heaviest, so do it while your muscles are the strongest, and because it opens up moving room in the old house, while providing stacking patterns for the new house as you unload the truck.
13. When it comes to actual moving day, host a moving party. Get a bunch of friends together, have food delivered, and put the people to work! Get a bunch of large trucks, vans, or cars together, and you'll make half as many trips back and forth.
14. And finally comes the unpacking. Don't feel like you have to unpack everything you had in the old house. Use a modicum of common sense. Unpack what you need first, and then work your way back through the older boxes if you even touch them again. Make use of your attic, basement, or storage unit, and store boxes away.
15. It's an arduous process, takes lots of patience, and sometimes you just end up with those junk boxes that are whatever was left on the counter top, swept into a giant box. But hey, do it with a friend, and its not nearly so bad.

Tips & Warnings

• Enlist friends and family to help. Have a friend come over, turn up the radio, and have a good time chatting and packing. It makes the time fly by, and you get twice as much packed.
• Don't over-exert yourself. Pack only a box or two a night. As the time gets closer to move, you can pack more, but by then it wont be so psychologically hard since you'll already be half way there.