Packing your things when moving house can be a logistical nightmare! However, if you approach the entire process with some sort of plan or system in mind, you can avoid a lot of potential pitfalls. On the flip side, packing things randomly means you’re only prolonging the inevitable—a huge headache when you have to unpack later.
Redditor u/Essdee1212 recently shared how she cued up a dose of malicious compliance after her husband didn’t help her pack the garage and expressed how much he didn’t care about it. Well, soon enough, he got a taste of why behaving like that was a bad idea. Read on for the full story.
Moving house can be a very stressful and overwhelming experience, especially if not everyone's helping out
Image credits: Blue Bird / pexels (not the actual photo)
One woman shared how she reacted when her husband was less than willing to cooperate with the packing
Image credits: Kenny Eliason / unsplash (not the actual photo)
Image source: Essdee1212
Ideally, everyone in the family would pitch in during the move
Image credits: Michal B / unsplash (not the actual photo)
Above everything—no matter what packing and detail-tracking system you come up with—what matters most when moving house is teamwork. It can be a thoroughly overwhelming and exhausting process. Especially if you’re taking on the lion’s share of the burden.
Every single additional person who pitches in and lends a helping hand makes the process go faster. The more people there are, the less energy everyone else spends while packing things, labeling boxes, and carrying them.
Not to mention that it’s… the nice thing to do—as cheesy as it sounds. Moving house is a huge step for anyone. And everyone’s things are everywhere. So it only makes sense that the entire family pitches in with the whole process.
If someone’s not cooperating all that much, it can be a bit awkward to bring up the fact in conversation. But it’s better to talk it out rather than to let those feelings of resentment build up.
Though in real life it’s never so simple, talk to your partner about how you’d like their help and how their behavior is making you feel. You want to be honest about your feelings without sounding like you’re making them out to be the villain.
At the end of the day, remember that you’re a team. You wouldn’t be living in the same house, packing, and moving if you weren’t!
The entire process can be very stressful, so it's vital to rest when you can
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What also would make perfect sense is that the person who constantly uses the garage and their tools would take the time to carefully pack these things up.
Any artisan, hobbyist, or DIY enthusiast knows just how important it is that they take care of their tools. Packing them up (or rather, asking someone else to do this) haphazardly means that you won’t easily find what you need when you unpack.
It’s kicking the can down the road and asking for trouble later on. And, in between the lines, it speaks volumes about a person’s attitude not just to their tools, but to teamwork as well.
However, let’s not forget that due to how stressful packing and moving is, lots of people end up getting frustrated. Sometimes, these emotions come spilling out—and not in the nicest way.
Just because someone is overly critical or no longer cares about the details might not mean that they’re ‘lazy’ or ‘uncaring.’ It might mean that they’re beyond tired and need a decent break. Every problem seems smaller after a nap, a good meal, and some proper relaxation.
No matter how you approach the finer details of packing, it’s best to get started as soon as possible. The entire process is probably going to take much longer and use more of your energy than you realize.
Moving is the perfect opportunity to declutter and say 'goodbye' to anything that no longer sparks joy
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One of the upsides of moving house is that you can use packing as an excuse to look through all of your old things and declutter. Most of us keep hanging on to stuff that we no longer need or want. But it’s time-consuming to sort through them (especially after a long day at the office, raising kids, or studying).
So when we’re forced to move everything anyway, you might as well say ‘bye’ to some old, broken, and tired things that no longer spark joy.
Broadly speaking, the more effort you put into labeling the boxes, the more you’re helping out your future self. But even if you don’t have the patience for this, you can still label your boxes in broad categories, e.g. by room, by general item type.
Doing something is better than nothing. Obviously, if you know something is incredibly important to you and you’ll need it ASAP after moving, at least detail in which box you’ll find it. And use liberal amounts of bubble wrap! (You can always reuse it the next time you move.)
In our experience, one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make while moving is putting way too many things into a single box.
We want to be so efficient and use as few boxes as possible that we sometimes forget that we’ll have to carry them to the car or the moving truck, and then throughout the new place. It’s better to pack fewer things so that the boxes are more manageable, for whoever does the heavy lifting.
The author responded to a lot of internet users' comments and reactions
Some of the readers were happy to share their own experiences with packing and moving
