MOVING HOUSE HACKS + PACKING TIPS // Moving Hacks That ACTUALLY Make Packing Easier

[Music] hey everyone my name is sophie from sophisticated organization welcome back to my channel or welcome if you're new here if you have been following me then you know that i am going through a major move from an apartment to our first home so i wanted to share with you guys some of the tips and tricks that i've learned personally along the way as well as some of the great things that you guys have shared with me some other things that i maybe didn't do myself but might be of interest to you to help make your move a little bit easier so with that let's jump into the first tip or hack and that is to try and avoid purchasing moving boxes now it may be inevitable that you might have to purchase some moving boxes but hopefully with these different ideas i'll help you reduce the number of boxes that you have to buy and then therefore reduce the total cost of your move because moving boxes can really add up even if they're only a dollar or so per box it does kind of add up when you have maybe 10 boxes or even more per room depending on your space that cost is gonna go up and up and up the more stuff you have so the first thing that i did because we knew we were moving in advance was saved boxes that were shipped to us so any delivery that we had if we got a box that was a decent size it was in okay shape i saved that box and then repacked into it to avoid purchasing just even one box that saves a dollar but again it adds up another thing that i have not been super successful with but a lot of you have suggested and i've heard other people having success doing this but that's going to your local grocery store people say liquor stores are a great place to go and asking them if they have any extra boxes you might be more successful in kind of off season moves summertime gets really busy so might be more difficult in the summer maybe easier in the winter depending on where you live to find those boxes and to get somebody to give you those boxes in my apartment we had a facebook group and i saw people on there asking hey has anybody recently moved in i'm moving out does anybody have any boxes so just do your best to ask around there are people constantly moving back and forth shipments going all over the place so you're bound to find some boxes that way another great thing that i personally did was packed into large storage totes so if you have a basement or a garage where you already have those storage totes great use those pack into them as much as you can that saves a box if you don't have them yet i didn't being in an apartment and then moving to a house but i knew i would want them in my house so i went ahead and purchased those ahead of time before the move packed into those and then could use them in the new house another great thing that you can do if you don't have those storage totes you don't want to buy those storage totes there are actually companies that rent out storage totes instead of using boxes so if you're somebody who's worried about the environment or you have a lot of heavy items renting out those types of bins is a great idea because they're much sturdier and then you're not wasting a whole bunch of boxes another thing that you can use is getting even more creative but trash bags are actually a great thing to pack in i started pretty early by packaging up some of our large pillows they are an awesome thing just to put into a trash bag you don't need a whole box for pillows and things like that you might want to save some of your other softer items to help pack other things that are breakable so blankets and things like that you might want to put in a box to help protect other items but things like if you have a ton of decor pillows and um pillows around your house trash bags are great i also use trash bags to package my clothing and just kind of shimmy them up the clothes and either crisscrossed the top of the loops over or if i had two trash bags because i had longer dresses um just kind of use two together you can also buy extra tall trash bags those big black ones but get creative with what you're packaging into let's talk about once you get everything in those bins storage totes trash bags anything that you're packing into you need to label everything and label everything super well i've seen people label their moving boxes and just put a label on the top saying kitchen the second you stack a few boxes on top of each other you have no idea what's in that box so first of all make sure you label the sides of your box i like to try and label all four sides if possible that way i avoid that situation where you just label three out of the four sides and you have these tall stacks and of course the one side that's showing is the one side good label so if you can label all four sides of the box but there are some other strategies to label what room or what space each box goes into a great one is to buy different colored packing tape or different colored duct tape and that way you can have a master list of pink as your kitchen blue is your bathroom green is your bedroom whatever color system you come up with especially if you have other people helping you or movers that can be really great to help them understand where to put those boxes really quick and really easy don't go super crazy with buying all sorts of detailed colors and stuff because then you're just gonna be left with a bunch of extra tape and make it more complicated than it needs to be but beyond labeling the actual room that the box needs to go into you're gonna make it so much easier on yourself if you label the contents of your box so a few strategies here i'm gonna just list out a few of the different things that you can do and hopefully one of these will appeal to you you should definitely write at least a short description on the box of basically what's in there that's kind of what i did i listed out a little bit beyond a short description but just kind of generally the things that are in there if there was anything i knew that i could potentially be hunting out when i get to the new space i made sure to include that in the short little list of things that are in the box but you can go even more detail than that you can create a master list on excel and have the full details of everything label your boxes with numbers match them up with the excel spreadsheet and go as crazy as you want i think that's great but i would still label the outside of those boxes because you might not be able to access your excel spreadsheet as quickly as you can just glance at the box again if you have other people helping you it might be hard to share that excel spreadsheet so using the method of writing on top just a quick description maybe in combination with the excel spreadsheet might be something that's interesting to you there are also companies that can help you catalog your moving boxes by giving you qr code stickers so those are the little stickers that you can just take your camera app on your phone hold it up to the box that little sticker and a web address will pop up you click on it and you would have told the sticker exactly what is in that box you can take a photo of it and catalog things that way or even just taking photos and keeping them in your phone but tons and tons of different ways to figure out how you want to label your boxes but whatever you do make sure you have a general sense of what room and what space those boxes are going into and you can quickly figure out what's in that box without opening it now you can't come to sophisticated organization and not expect me to say this tip in a moving hacks video but that is to declutter before your move how terrible would it be to spend all this time packaging something up just to get to your house and say oh i don't even use that anyway why did i waste the time packing it why did i take that extra expense of filling up a moving box having somebody lift it and moving it across the country even moving it down the street it's such a waste so i of course had the plan that i wasn't going to stay in my apartment for too long it was just going to be a temporary thing so i followed my sophisticated declutter six month declutter at the beginning of the year did a major declutter but even though i did that i always say there's more to declutter you can always get rid of things so if you don't have time to do a full major house declutter and focus just on that as you're packing critically ask yourself the questions that we always ask ourselves when we're decluttering as you're putting those items into moving boxes or whatever you're loading them into that way hopefully you'll avoid bringing a ton of extra stuff that gets to your house and you know you weren't going to use it anyway it's probably inevitable that you're going to move some things to your new house that you actually even loved in your current space you get to your new space and it doesn't quite fit the same it doesn't quite work and you end up getting rid of it or donating it but those are kind of the exceptions not really what we're talking about here these are items that you don't use you're not going to use at the new place get rid of them now don't waste the time or money moving them another thing that was really important to me to make the unpacking process even easier was to pack things in the current state that they were in as much as possible so by that i mean trying to keep the different items that were together in my kitchen together in one box it doesn't make sense to have half of your silverware in one box and the other half in another you want to keep all of those like items together i also took that to a whole other level and tried to keep the organizers that i used with the actual items again things might kind of shift around when you get to your new house but that idea of silverware again you can take your whole entire cutlery tray wrap it in saran wrap or even that giant really strong saran wrap that you can get to wrap around your furniture when you're moving wrap it around there and package it that way it's gonna make it a lot easier because you don't have to find a different place to put your silverware and then you move into the new house set that right in your drawer hopefully it fits in your new drawer but you set it right in and you are done so trying to keep each box dedicated to one thing keeping those items together so you can quickly and easily unload things as fast as possible once you get to your new space along those same lines as you're unplugging things unscrewing things make sure you're labeling those items as well i have trouble because i'm technologically challenged when i unplug all of those cords behind my tv or in my office because i have a big work from home set up with my extra monitors and printer cords and all of those different things when you unplug them label them so you know first of all that they go to the tv but maybe even where they plug into the tv or what other item they plug into from your work computer to your monitor or whatever it might be labeling it's going to make it so much easier you can put it in a little baggie together and have all of your office cords together all of your tv cords together and again when you're taking apart other furniture items as well when you have all of the screws and different parts that might come with furniture items as you take them apart to get them ready to move put those in a baggie label them as well it's going to make it easier so you know what they go to but also you'll have those things ready for when you need to rebuild any items or reinstall any items when you get to the new place the last thing that you can do to set yourself up for success when you get to the new space is to really think about what you're going to need first the moment you get into that new house so there are three probably different things that i would break this category into the first one is it's really helpful to pack a suitcase with your stuff kind of like you're just going on a vacation that way you have your pajamas ready you have your toiletries ready you have an outfit for the next day ready all of those things that you might not get to unpack the first day that you get there depending on when you arrive or how big your space is how many boxes you have all of that stuff just take out the worry of having your personal essentials all scattered over and hidden in boxes by packing a suitcase now you can pack for just a night or i would probably suggest pretending like you're going on more of like a three or four day vacation and having all of that stuff ready for you the next thing that's really helpful is to have an essentials bin and essentials bin is the things that i would categorize as items that you need right away when you move into the new house to unpack to clean your spaces to go to the bathroom so that's going to include having paper towels packed a couple rolls of toilet paper some cleaning supplies so you can wipe off any surfaces before you're starting to unpack boxes and load things into maybe kitchen cabinets or something also making sure you have things like scissors to cut open your boxes if you get to your new space and you tape things so well and you can't get them open you're gonna want a pair of scissors but i've been leaving on the screen here a few different things that are important to have in this essentials bin to make that unpacking process just even easier the last thing i'll say is as i was packing up my apartment i realized there was a lot of stuff that i kind of had to hold off for the last minute because it was that stuff that i really really needed even until that very last day so those things are going to be your boxes that you're going to label open first because of the things that you needed last they're going to be the things that you're probably going to want first when you move to the new space so some people just suggest doing one box that says open first i say do an open first for every single room so for my bedroom i have it open first for my bathroom i had it open first my kitchen all of that stuff then i know it is the first thing if somebody says what can i help you unpack direct them to that open first bin or you can open it yourself and get those things set up so the next day or even that first day you move there you have those things ready that you're gonna want first i also wanted to include a last minute tip that isn't really a moving tip in the sense of a packing tip but a lot of you were telling me the first thing that i should do when i get to my new space is to make sure that i get my bedroom unpacked i think a lot of people focus on the kitchen as one of the first areas to unpack that one is pretty essential but you need to go to bed that night when you get done unpacking and the last thing you're going to want to do is dig around trying to find your stuff first of all but even if you know where it is making a brand new bed and setting all of that up after you've been lifting boxes unpacking things and just mentally and physically exhausted that's just going to be the last thing on your mind so do it early in the process one of the first things that you can do make your bed so when you are exhausted and you're ready to call it quits you can just crash now i'm so excited because next up i'm gonna be sharing with you tons of my unpacking i'm filming that for you i'm gonna be sharing a lot of the spaces that i have and organizing them so if you aren't subscribed to my channel i would love to have you subscribe and follow along with that journey i am expecting my first baby in december so lots of fun things happening over here if you liked today's video i would also appreciate if you gave it a big thumbs up and until next time i will see you guys later [Music]

Channel: Sophisticated Organization

Views: 32,745

Keywords: MOVING HOUSE HACKS, packing tips, packing tips for moving, Moving Hacks That ACTUALLY Make Packing Easier, moving hacks, packing hacks, moving tips, sophisticated organization, sophisticated organization youtube, must know moving tips, moving to our first house, how to move, life hacks, make moving less stressful

Id: OzZq1PHU7PM

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021