Without making it too complicated, let’s just say that moving house is a pain. Not only because of the physical effort required, but also because it feels like a never-ending story that scales depending on how big your house is and how much stuff you have.
Which? has a moving home checklist that isn’t too complex to make you feel like reality is hitting hard and isn’t too short so as to leave you wondering where half of your stuff is.
In a nutshell, moving house is a process that can span months. Sure, moving day is often just a day, if not two, but that’s only just one side of it. You still gotta worry about figuring out the logistics, start canceling and settling your utility and other domestic services, start packing and otherwise start disconnecting both physically and emotionally from the place you (probably) used to call home until now.
“Bonus points” if you’re moving to a new place because that’s a whole other can of beans that requires a completely separate checklist.
If you haven’t seen it yet, legendary stand-up comedian George Carlin has a skit about stuff that perfectly sums up the nuance and complexity of moving. It’s not about a permanent move, but the struggle is essentially the same.
Besides having to move your stuff, the skit also points out a very human issue of having more space than you have stuff. The solution to that is, more often than not, getting more stuff. And then your next moving experience is going to be even more elaborately ridiculous.
There are a dozen hacks and things that you can do to minimize the struggle. The first big step is to plan, prepare, and be organized. At this point, you can book movers early, plan the logistics, call the various house services companies and get all the utilities sorted for the old and the new place, and, most importantly, start the packing process.
By packing far in advance, you’re saving time, which will be a luxury during the days before the actual move. But this also allows you to do some spring cleaning while you’re packing.
Do a mental check on all the things you pack and ask yourself whether you’ll need it in your new place. By setting certain criteria, like have I used this in the last 2 years?, you’re also minimizing the amount of stuff you’ll actually have to move all the while bringing less (or zero) clutter into your tabula rasa of a home.
It helps to always be on the lookout for boxes—check with local businesses if they have any spare boxes, or you can also look up if anyone in your area might be giving them away on Facebook Marketplace. Worst case scenario, Home Depot.
Once the box situation is sorted out, start filling them up. After filtering out the junk from the treasure, put the heavier stuff at the bottom so it’s not crushed (or it is not the one crushing), leaving no room in the box. It helps to group items into a single box if those items belong in a particular room, and to label the boxes accordingly.
