This whole selling/moving/buying process has been an emotional and stressful rollercoaster. If you’ve gone through this before you know what I mean. Having moved four times in nine years doesn’t really make it easier. This last time was by far the longest we’ve lived in any house. Add in that we’d added three more kids to the mix since we bought the home six years ago. Needless to say, I was NOT looking forward to packing up this time around. Having 1,690 square feet helped keep us free from superfluous clutter. However, seven people still tend to collect “stuff” over time. Today I’m sharing some packing and moving tips I’ve learned over the years to help your move be a little less painful, especially when you’ve got kids underfoot!

moving tips I swear by

start packing early

Sometimes things can move quickly when you’re selling a home. Other times… not so much. If you can start packing up early though it will make your life so much easier! In fact, preparing your home to be listed is the perfect time to start packing up.

Start with personal family photos. Not only are these not essential to your everyday living the next couple of months while you go through the selling process, but you should be trying to make you home more “generic” anyway. You want potential buyers to be able to see themselves in your home. Don’t clear out so much that it looks sterile (there’s a reason there are professional staging companies!) but there’s a difference between cozy and cluttered.

Another area you can start clearing out and packing up are your closets. Do you have a large movie collection you could do without for awhile? Could you make do without your good china? Can you pack away your out of season clothes? Buyers want to see that your home has plenty of storage so by clearing out some items now it’s a win/win situation.

declutter as you go

If you’ve got the time then now is the perfect time to declutter! I think we’re pretty good about keeping clutter at bay, but even I was surprised at how much I threw out! So many old papers, broken toys, torn books, and stained clothes. We donated anything we could and threw out the rest!

I prefer to work room by room. For example, if I were in my son’s room I’d go through his dresser drawers, then his closet, then his miscellaneous spaces. Each space would be gone through and either kept in its current location, packed away, donated, or thrown in a trash bag. Once you start going it gets easier and easier to organize and purge and it feels so good when you’re done!

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t have the time to declutter as much as you’d like before you move. Sometimes the moving process is really fast and there’s very little time. Give yourself some grace and declutter once you’re unpacked. One way to declutter is by having a “miscellaneous” box for each room and save that for unpacking last. Or you can just assign yourself a room a week once the unpacking chaos is over.

label and organize

You know the phrase “do as I say, not as I do”? Well, that’s my little disclaimer for this section. When it comes to unpacking it can be chaos and that was especially true this time around. Since this was my first time moving with five little rugrats underfoot I had no idea just how hard it would be! I tried to pack quickly and efficiently but I didn’t do as good of a job packing as I had in the past.

For example, I had labeled boxes “kitchen” but wasn’t specific about what was in them. Other than the occasional “heavy” scrawled across the side and a “paper goods” box set aside, that is. Since unpacking the kitchen is always my first priority I thought that would suffice. However, I quickly learned that unpacking with five kiddos is no joke! It took me about three days to fully unpack the kitchen. Meanwhile, it took me way too long to find all the items I needed for our daily lives. In the future I’ll be sure to label boxes more specifically so I’m not pawing through 10 boxes to find a single item.

If you’re going to have boxes in storage during your moving transition colored tape is a big help. Several years ago we found ourselves in this boat. I used blue painters tape on the side of all the boxes that were going into the apartment with us. That way we could easily see at a glance which boxes needed to be carried up two flights of stairs and which ones were going into storage.

I hope if you’re moving this has been helpful for you! What moving tips do you have? Do you have a go-to system you swear by?