House moving tips

Here are some useful tips for moving house which will make the experience so much easier for you.

“If you’re moving house you are going to need boxes and as a guide I estimate that you will need 10 boxes per room and then an extra 10 as well so you can roughly work out how many boxes you’re going to need and so many people have said to me don’t pay for boxes there are so many supermarkets shops friends family that are trying to get rid of boxes and if you go to the supermarket and you just ask they will give them to you.  

If you use a removals firm they will supply the boxes but if you’re doing it yourself make sure you don’t pay for them and with all the free boxes that you do get you might find that they don’t have handles so a really good hack is to take an x-acto knife and just cut two slits in it and create your own handle this makes it so much easier to carry and you can either do it in a triangle or a rectangle.  I personally found that the triangular way actually was a lot easier and worked even better and a huge tip that so many people told me when I said I was moving was to start decluttering now. We’ve been quite fortunate that during quarantine we have had time to declutter like crazy but you would be amazed at how much you can accumulate over the years.

We’ve actually got a skip at the moment to make sure we don’t move with any unwanted things and once you have gone through every room and donated or got rid of things that you don’t want anymore, it’s time to get packing and a really cool packing hack is to use vacuum pack bags. You can pick these up so cheaply from Poundland or amazon and various other places. I’m sure you guys have seen these before but you basically put your belongings into the bag close it up and then using your vacuum you suck out all the extra air that is in the clothes around the clothes and you wouldn’t believe how much this reduces the size, it makes it so much smaller and it also protects your clothes and something really cool which I didn’t realize you could do is you can create these yourselves if you just have a bin bag you can put in things like large jumpers or chunky knitwear or even duvets or throws or blankets and then just stick the vacuum into the black bag hold the edges around it and it works so well.

I was shocked when we did this at how much my big chunky knitwear shrunk down and when it comes to hanging clothes a lot of removal companies will actually have railings in their truck or even big boxes that have railings in them and they’ll just grab your stuff on a hanger and then stick it into the truck, but if you want to protect your clothes from any dirt when they’re being handled a cool hack is to just stick a bin bag up from underneath them and tie it at the top where the hangers are. You can do this in groups maybe 10 items at a time and it just means they’re that bit more protected.

This next hack I thought was complete genius was to pack a basket or box or handbag whatever you have with essentials for the bathroom so that when you get to your new destination if anyone needs to use the loo you’ll have things like hand wash a hand towel first aid kit maybe even toothbrushes toilet roll and essentials like that so whether it’s you or your removal man anyone can use the loo straight away and you want to pack that into your car along with a little suitcase with your essentials for the evening.

You basically want to pack a bag like you’re going away for a night because when you move all of your worldly belongings it will make it quite difficult to find things like pyjamas your child’s favourite blanket and so on and you can even do an essential box for your kitchen so you might want to pack things like your kettle, some coffee, some tea some mugs, so that you can have that maybe some bowls some plates to eat off of a surface spray a cloth in case things need to be wiped down straight away some tea towels.

Anything essential – maybe even your chargers because you don’t want to be scrambling around looking for those and pack these essential boxes in your car so you know exactly where they are.

This next hack is a really cool way to help protect your plates that little bit more and cushion them with party plates. I always have so many of these left over in our garage from birthdays and various events. I’m just putting them in between our plates this is so quick and easy to do and just gives them that bit more padding. I’ve also seen people online using coffee filters for this as well and when it comes to packing photo frames or any artwork that you’ve had framed make sure that you pack it in your boxes horizontally rather than vertically when you pack frames on top of each other there’s more chance of them breaking from the impact of everything on top of them whereas if you pack them horizontally and then make sure you really fill up any of the gaps within the box, then they will be more protected and you can use things that you just have around the house, perhaps clothes. or towels. I use this big giant fluffy throw and I saw one quote online that said if it don’t shake it don’t break so give your box a shake and if you hear anything you might need to pack it even tighter and of course label your fragile boxes with fragile tape.

I was really pleased that I managed to pick up a huge roll of this from Poundland and while we’re talking about tape a really good hack is to make sure that you fold over the end before you put it onto your box this will save you so much time because it will be easier to take the tape off when you get to your new house and more importantly than that it will save your manicure because you will have a lot of boxes to open and I don’t want to sound like a health and safety expert here or anything, but if you have scales at home and they’re really easy to use consider using them to weigh your boxes when you’re packing them. I found an article online that said ideally your boxes won’t weigh more than 15 kilograms or 30 pounds so if it’s easy enough stick them on the scale and you could maybe save someone’s back and for heavier items like books a really good hack is to use your suitcases. Suitcases can be wheeled and they can also protect and store your big items better than boxes can and

I found so many hacks online of just really clever ways to use things that you already have a great way to pack up your sharp knives or sharp scissors is to use an oven mitt you can pack these in and then they are protected they’re so very padded and this is just such a genius one that works really well. Another one I saw was if you’re packing glassware, wine glasses maybe, champagne flutes or just glasses in general consider using your cosy socks or in this case I was using matt’s socks as well these fit over champagne flutes really easily and give them a little bit more padding so that I don’t have to use as much newspaper and just generally using everything and anything that you have available – handbags, plastic bags, baskets.

I’m using a big pot to pack up some of the things from our pantry like our spices and this worked so well and of course you’ll want to label your boxes because you might have four or five other people helping you and they will need to know where to put the boxes down and you really don’t want to get it in the wrong place so you can either do it the traditional way or I’ve seen some really cool things online where people actually colour code the boxes so maybe you make red for kitchen yellow for bedroom blue for bathroom etc. Whatever it is you can colour code it or you can just use simple labels where you write what is actually in the boxes on it so it’s just really straightforward and easy to find things at the other end.

I think that’s the main thing that you want to do and this next hack is such a good one if you’ve spent loads of time curating some shelves in your home and you want to set them up the same when you move just take some quick photos so that you can reference them and set them up the same when you get to your new house and when you are taking things down like shelves or toys or beds or drawers or anything make sure that you save the screws and anything else wall brackets or anything and put them into a little ziploc baggie and tape them to the item

You don’t lose them you can just write on the bag what they’re actually for and make sure on move day that you have some screwdrivers close to you. I’m actually sticking them into a bag but you could put them into your handbag. I think you’ll definitely need screwdrivers on the day because you may have to take down some last minute light fixtures or you may want to start building things when you do get to your new house.

The last hack I thought was a really good one for those bigger items like your table legs or your kitchen stool legs, consider putting some newspaper onto the bottom of the legs and then taping them this way when you do get to your new house it will be easier to slide these across the floor without scratching your brand new floor “