Moving Time!

If you’ve used Apartment Solutions to help find your rental apartment or town home; chances are you will be packing up to move soon. Below are some moving tips to help save you time and money on your move.

• Oragnize and Purge – Determine what you are moving with, storing, donating and selling first. Not doing this can be one of the biggest blunders when packing. After all, why pack and unpack items that you no longer need? Save time & money by sorting first. The best way to do this is to make categories; Clothing, Furniture, Electronics, Toys, Books, etc. Once you determine your categories have boxes/bags set aside and labeled for Storage, Donation, and Sale.
  • A quick and easy tip for your donation bags/boxes that will help save time is to schedule a free pick up using Donation Town for the items you no longer need. You can also call the organization you prefer to donate to and see if they offer free pick up.
  • For the items you plan to store long term you could look at getting a storage pod delivered to your home, condo, or apartment. You can find more information on this here. If long term storage isn’t necessary but the items you packed won’t be needed immediately take the extra time to label the box as storage with a note of what type of items are in the box so that when you go looking for your Christmas decorations or maternity clothes you won’t have to sift through a dozen boxes before finding the one you need. There also might be other items you wish to relocate along with you that could prove difficult doing so on your own, for example, you may not want to drive your vehicle a long distance, there are many different solutions you can find to have your vehicle relocated to your new location, even this exotic car shipping company offers services for many other vehicle types. So with the right research, it can be easy enough to accommodate for all of your belongings when it comes to moving.
  • Lastly for the items you wish to sell there are many online sites that you can use to sell items in good condition that you no longer need. Social Media sites like Facebook now offer a marketplace which is basically a huge social media garage sale. There are also local groups on facebook that may have online garage sales. A quick search of your subdivision, city or county will pull up groups.

• Bathroom– When possible set up at least one bathroom with hand soap, a hand towel and toilet paper. Moving can be time consuming and having a bathroom set up for you, your family and your movers is extremely helpful unless you want your first impression with your neighbor’s to be asking to use their restroom.

• Kitchen – At a minimum, stop at the grocery store or even the dollar store and pick up a roll of paper towels, some paper plates, a box of plastic forks/spoons/knives, a few drinks and snacks. Moving is tough work and having a quick snack at the counter saves a lot of time and money when compared to taking breaks to run out for food.

• Groceries – Stop buying groceries at least a week before you move.
  • Use up all of your refrigerated and frozen items first which will make for less waste.
  • Try to use up your pantry items as well which will save on the number of boxes you need to pack and unpack.
  • When using up items keep a running list of what you will need to purchase to restock your refrigerator, freezer and pantry once you move.
  • For help using up the ingredients you have on hand there are sites like Supercook and My Fridge Food where you can type in or check off what you have and a list of recipes will be created for you to choose from.

• Label Boxes – One item I wish I had when I moved a few years ago; Labeled Packing Tape. Unfortunately, I am not the millionaire that came up with this idea but it sure beats running around looking for a permanent marker to label boxes. You can check amazon or go to Uboxes.com and purchase labeled packing tape for the number of rooms you will need or check your local hardware store. If labeled packing tape isn’t for you I would definitely recommend having a quite few permanent markers on hand to label boxes with. The most important information to label them with is the room they go in, whether or not there are fragile items and if you want to reduce the headaches of unpacking even more you could jot a few notes on the side of the box with what the box contains. If you are super organized you can label the boxes with numbers and keep a running list on your phone with the box number and contents. You may also want to consider roll cage hire for moving the boxes out of your current property and into the new one.

• Pack and Overnight Bag – This part is key to a hassle free move. Pretend you are going on a vacation and bring along necessities to get you through the first few days. For most we have high expectations of ourselves and those helping us move that we will be able to “do it all” the day we move. It’s better to be safe rather than sorry when it comes to having a clean toothbrush and some PJ’s to change into if you are too worn down to unpack boxes.

• Unpack, decorate and enjoy your new space! If you find that after you are done unpacking that there isn’t room for everything check with the leasing office to see if they offer storage cubes on site.