My Best Tip For Moving

If there’s one truth universally acknowledged, it’s that moving SUCKS.

Sure, the idea of a new home or a new city can be really exciting, and present amazing opportunities! But the actual process of packing, coordinating, moving, and unpacking your stuff? It’s just a total drag.

The last time we moved was October 2015. It was a very much longed for move: we got to stay in SF, in the area of the city we already knew and loved, but we were able to make the transition from a condo with no outdoor space to an adorable single family home with a postage stamp yard. And still, moving SUCKED!

My single biggest piece of advice: organize BEFORE you move.  This makes sense on several levels: packing is the worst bit of moving and you’ll have less to pack if you declutter, if you’re paying movers you’ll pay less for them to pack and transport less, and the unpacking process at the end when you’re already tired and drained will be so much less painful if the organizing is already done.  Moving is such an upheaval of your family’s life that getting organized for your move will make the experience so much more comfortable for everyone involved.

Before we moved, we purged ruthlessly. The categories that really saw their ranks decimated were books and media. My husband decided, way back in 2015, that the era of physical media was over. The only DVD’s we have kept at the time were my high school and college dance videos and our wedding video… it only took a couple years, but we did eventually rip and upload them to cloud storage. We were harsh with our books too: the only volumes that made the cut were books that meant a lot to us or that we still had yet to read.

I also embarked on the most thorough purge my closet had seen in years.  If I didn’t love it, it went.  The hardest part was to get rid of a couple of pairs of really very cute designer shoes that hurt a lot – for those of you who know me and my penchant for shoes, you know that the amount of pain that would cause me to avoid a pair of shoes is quite extreme!

Finally, most of our furniture got the heave-ho.  When we first moved into our condo in 2010, we were on a tighter budget and had only lived in small apartments, so we accepted all possible hand-me-downs from family and tried to economize when finishing filling up the rooms.  It was a good strategy for the time, and I think we did a pretty good job in making the whole thing coherent. Still, the move to a house marked our readiness to decorate more carefully and invest in high quality pieces.

Despite the pandemic, a lot of people are moving these days - whether they’re leaving cities, upgrading from apartments to condos or houses, or even moving in with family. So over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to share some of my favorite resources, tips, and tricks for moving!

And if you’re still overwhelmed by the idea of getting ready to move, I can help! With my virtual organizing service, I can guide you through the process of decluttering and organizing to prepare you for a smooth moving process. Click here to schedule your consultation!

LMW