We recently left our convenient home in the city for a more relaxed environment. My children are growing and because we lived in a condominium right smack in the center of a business district, pollution was a problem. We now stay in a quiet environment with cleaner air and a great view with greenery to wake up to. The packing went on for weeks! While I thought we didn’t have much belongings, I was wrong. Despite periodically donating things and updating our toys and clothes, I was amazed at how much we could accumulate. Because we are temporarily renting for some months while our home is being built, we had to downsize. The strategy was to take only what we need into our small town house and store other things that we can momentarily live without. This meant down scaling our wardrobe, storing some of the children’s toys and even some of our dishes and silverware. I carefully planned strategy as best as I could yet some things are unavoidable. Here are some tips that I have to share with you:
1. Borrow old boxes from friends or family that have recently moved house too.
2. Buy lots of plastic stretch wrap, corrugated paper rolls, and packing tape.
3. Hire extra house help at least 3 weeks before your move.
4. Sort your belongings and get rid of everything you have not used in the past year.
5. Hold a yard sale or donate to orphanages and charity.
6. Label boxes according to color. I used colored paper to code my boxes. Pink was for storage and green would go with us to our rental unit.
7. Label boxes and put the location of the room where it should be brought to or stored. I labelled my boxes with: masters bedroom, kids room, office etc. This way the movers knew where to put each box.
8. Clean all walls, surfaces, closets and bathrooms but do the vacuum and floors last. My mistake was to let my help vacuum on the first day when I should have left this for last because all the moving just made everything dirty again.
9. Label all your cleaning agents with what areas or surfaces they can be used for. This saves you the trouble of having to teach your help directly. Have lots of rags in handy.
10. Wiping and mopping may help but it really is necessary to vacuum otherwise all the dust just gets shifted around.
Have you ever had to move house? What other tips can you share? If you have any specific questions about moving, send me a message and I might have the answers for you!
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