How to Organize Your Next Move

By Scott Boone

Image courtesy of Scott's Discount Moving

If you have read any of my recent blogs, you are familiar with my advice to plan your move well in advance of moving day.  That being said, what do you do with the ever-swelling sea of boxes that begin to pop up like mushrooms all over your home?  While some people bite the bullet and order a POD, this can necessitate spending an extra $100 or more per month.  But, what if you could get the convenience and extra storage space of a POD without having to spend one red cent?  Would that help make your move more convenient?

Believe it or not, many homeowners and house renters have a built-in storage bay.  It is called a garage, or a toolshed.  Either of these units, when emptied of cars or gardening gear make a perfectly sound, weather-proof storage area that is ideal for stacking lots of boxes.  Whether the garage is built for 1 or 2 cars, matters not.  It’s just a matter of rearranging the contents therein to create a storage area that will help you eliminate clutter around the house. 

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

The first thing you should do is go through the garage or shed and eliminate anything that has been sitting there for a year or more that you will most likely never use again.  This includes open paint cans, half-empty cleaning solvents, as well as a gamut of stuff that was simply parked in the garage or shed only to be forgotten long ago.

Once you have eliminated the flotsam and jetsam in your garage or shed, the next thing you should do is determine what is contained in either that could fetch a pretty penny at a yard sale.  That’s right, by combing through the garage, toolshed and your home, you can make a tidy profit by staging a yard sale a couple of months before the move.  Heck, if properly organized and advertised, you might just be able to pick up enough folding green to pay for your move, or at least a sizeable portion of it.

Image courtesy of Pexels

Next, you will want to pack everything in the garage or shed that you won’t need before the move.  This is actually the best way to kill two birds with one stone, by beginning in the very place you will convert into a storage area.  Box and label everything up, making sure to stack your boxes as far back as possible, while leaving room enough to navigate through the garage to anything you might still need, such as a refrigerator or a lawn mower.  If your garage or shed has shelves, this is even better, since it will allow you to maximize your use of available space by giving you the ability to vertically stack boxes to the ceiling. 

Then it’s onto the next little used areas of your home.  This includes closets and cupboards, china cabinet, attic and crawl space.  The secret to storage success is to not only label your boxes by room, but to stack the boxes in your storage area by room.  If you want some advice on how to best identify your belongings after the move, check out my earlier post, “10 Tips for Labelling Your Moving Boxes.”

The reason you want to sort as well as store your belongings with care will only become obvious once the move is complete and you need to begin the arduous process of unpacking.  Perform the task of organizing well and it will save you weeks of frustration as you try to work your way through a maze of your own making. Even better, if your new home has a garage or shed, you can use this area as temporary storage which will allow you to keep clutter to a minimum.  As an added incentive, having your cars parked in the driveway should only help motivate you to get the job of unpacking done.

Safety is Job #1

Image courtesy of Wikimedia

Particularly if your storage area doesn’t have shelves, take care to stack the heaviest boxes on the bottom of the pile and the lightest boxes on top. This means start with books on the bottom and towels on top.  Get this wrong and you will create a situation where the belongings on the bottom of the stack can get crushed, or the stack could take a tumble.

Once your garage or shed starts to look like the warehouse in Raiders of the Lost Ark, it is time to do a safety inspection to make sure you don’t have a safety hazard.  To do this, walk up to the nearest stack and take a quick inventory by reading the labels.  If necessary, rearrange the stack before moving onto the next.  While you are examining the stack, also reach up to the top box and pull it toward you slightly to see if the boxes below shift.  If you detect any instability in the stack, unstack and restack.  Also look for any signs of bent lids or partially crushed boxes.  This is a sure sign that you are overloading the stack.

During the course of the final few weeks before moving day, your impromptu storage unit can fill up quickly.  This shouldn’t pose a problem, provided that you don’t stack boxes too high or too closely together.  If you have to reach higher than shoulder height, you or your moving crew run the risk of pulling the stack down on top of them.  If you have barely enough room to move or find it impossible to turn around when you are deep within your manmade box canyon, then you have the stacks too close together.  While this isn’t a problem in a toolshed, in a 2-car garage this can pose a safety hazard.  Remember, your movers need to be able to carry the boxes out to the truck.  Make sure you leave them enough room to maneuver.

If your home doesn’t have either a garage or a shed, you can also turn your den, spare bedroom or home office into a temporary storage unit.  While this could mean inconveniencing you for a few weeks, it is still a better option than cluttering up the rest of your home with an ever-growing sea of boxes. 

If you want your move to be stress-free, call Scott Boone at Scott’s Discount Movers.  With over 4,000 moves, Scott Boone has handled moves of all sizes, including local and cross country. If you are looking to move your home or office, you can depend on Scott's Discount Movers to provide a stress-free relocation.