Hello everyone! One week from today, we will be settled into our new house and we can’t wait!
A new little thing you will learn about me this week is that I HATE packing. When we moved out of our apartment, I was STILL packing on the day that we moved. I don’t know what it is, I just…hate it? Normally, I am pretty organized and I hardly procrastinate but when it comes to packing up my place, I just don’t even care.
When we moved out of the apartment and into my parents, we knew that most of our stuff would have to go into storage so I wanted to make sure I could keep everything organized and safe while we waited for our house to be built. I looked for any tips I could to help me and now I want to share all of my favorites with you!
USE COLORFUL TAPE TO LABEL BOXES
We will start with my favorite tip! So when we moved out of the apartment, we had to make sure we knew which boxes were going into storage and which ones were going into my parents house.
My labels went like this:
Yellow – Kitchen (Storage)
Blue – Bathrooms/Bedroom (Storage)
Pink- Bathrooms/Bedrooms (Parents House)
Green – Other (Parents House)
This made it easier for my movers too so I could just tell them Yellow/Blue goes into storage and Pink/Green goes into the house.
I also took sharpies and wrote on the tape exactly what room the contents of the box were in and under the tape I wrote what was in them.
SHRINK WRAP WILL BE YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND
One of my friends from high school gave me this helpful tip and it helped so much! She told me to wrap my utensils in the kitchen like silverware and other cooking utensils. I love this because it keeps everything together and makes it so much easier when fitting everything in boxes.
If you’re like me, you keep your silverware and other utensils in little drawer organizers so what I did was just keep everything in the organizer and wrap the organizer so nothing would fall out. Then, I would just stick it in the box! It was so quick and easy and it made me shrink wrap so many other things in my apartment. Even things that probably didn’t need to be wrapped but I was like “SHRINK WRAP IT ALL”.
ASK STORES FOR BOXES INSTEAD OF BUYING THEM
Since I worked at Target and Victoria’s Secret and still had connections at both stores, I was able to get some boxes from there so that we didn’t have to pay for any! The Victoria’s Secret boxes were our favorite because they were nice and big and sturdy and they gave me quite a bit! Target gave me different sizes so that was nice when we wanted to keep certain things in their own box instead of mixing things.
If you did not work at places like Target and VS, you can still call places like Target or Wal-Mart and ask to speak to a manager and see if they will hold boxes for you. When I worked at Target, we did it all the time for people so it was no problem at all!
LIST EVERYTHING YOU CAN WHEN LABELING BOXES
So this one comes from my mom and honestly, I thought she was a little crazy until we had to dig through our storage boxes a couple times to pull out things we ended up needing.
Her and my grandma like to list on the boxes what is inside and they list pretty much EVERYTHING in the box. It is SO helpful in case you have to dig back through them later.
It’s also just nice to know what is inside in case certain things may be fragile and movers need to be extra careful with those ones.
WHATEVER IT IS…JUST THROW IT IN A BOX
When we moved from my parents to our apartment, I had a lot of help from family so honestly, everything was packed very nicely and moving was a breeze. When we moved from the apartment back to my moms, I had help from my mom but a lot of it, I did on my own and it definitely showed on moving day…
There was so much that I said “It doesn’t need to be in a box, I’ll just throw it in the car on moving day” and BOY WAS THAT STUPID.
We had so many miscellaneous things that it was such a pain! I really wish I would have just thrown things in boxes instead of carrying so many things individually.
You better believe that this time around, anything that can go in a box…WILL be put in a box!
TAKE ALL THE HELP YOU CAN GET
One thing I love about Jaden’s family is that they are amazing helpers when it comes to moving! My mom and sisters helped me pack up our apartment while Jaden’s family helped us move it into my parents. My mom also watched Lexi while we were moving so that was nice.
While we do rent a Uhaul, my Father In Law owns a truck so it is SO nice to have both of those to load boxes and furniture. I am ALL about taking the least amount of trips back and forth as possible! Jaden also has a bigger family than I do so having all the extra hands makes it so much faster and easier to move!
So if people offer to help move, let them! Also, if they offer to bring food on moving day, also let them! It is so nice not to have to worry about food on that day too.
DON’T WANT TO BUY CLOTHES BOXES? JUST GET SOME ROPE!
I tried to find a picture of this but I couldn’t find one and now I am regretting not taking a picture of my car when I did this..
Clothes boxes are expensive and I really didn’t want to pay for them. I also didn’t really want to just “throw” my clothes in the car because then hangers get everywhere, clothes fall off hangers and it’s just a mess.
I found this tip that said to get some rope and tie it between the two handles in the back seat of your car. I honestly do not know any other way to describe the handles I am talking about other than the “Oh S*** Handles” in the back of the car. So yeah, those ones.
Make sure the rope is tight and just hang your clothes on there! Simple as that.
JUST BUY THE BUBBLE WRAP AND PACKING PAPER
I know a lot of people try to get by without the bubble wrap and packing paper and if you are not about that paper/bubble wrap life, I won’t try to change you.
BUT it saved my life. Where I work now, we always have a ton of bubble wrap on hand so I asked my bosses if I could buy some bubble wrap from them and they let me have a giant roll which was AWESOME! I bubble wrapped everything.
It gave me peace of mind knowing all of my stuff was safe and since I am a master bubble wrapper now, I am confident that most (if not ALL) of our things will survive the move!
TIME FOR A BIG TRIP TO GOODWILL…OR FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE
For our last tip, this is my least favorite because it is time consuming but also the tip that I am SO HAPPY I followed after moving was all over!
I found that the best way to pack everything up was by making sure our apartment was cleaned and organized BEFORE I began packing.
So I went through everything a week or two before packing. I went through our closets and pulled out all of the clothes we didn’t wear anymore, went through decor and put aside everything I did not want anymore, etc. We made special boxes that were “donation” boxes that we had taken to Goodwill when we moved.
For things that you could get money for, like furniture, you can always put it up on Facebook Marketplace to see if you can get some money back! We did this with our couch and then put that money toward our new couch.
Once you get rid of all of the “junk”, it makes it SO much easier to pack up later!
If you are planning to move any time soon, I hope you found these tips helpful or keep them in mind! They definitely saved me!
We have a very busy schedule these next two weeks, starting tomorrow! We will be doing our final walkthrough for our house and signing closing papers at the end of the week and then finally moving in next week! I will TRY to get a post up next Tuesday so I am hoping to get it all typed out before then so I can have it scheduled to automatically post next week while we are moving. It might be our final chapter for our “Building Our House” series or another wedding series post, but we’ll see!
Also, be sure to follow my Instagram, click here to follow me, because I plan on doing an “Empty House Tour” before we start moving all of our boxes and stuff in so you will definitely want to check that out!
Nissa St Gelais 