Packing up your belongings as you prepare to move is a process. It can be emotional, physically demanding and not a simple process. If you are joining the DITY/PPM movement, you are getting to ready to pack up your home. If you are doing it this moving season, or looking at it next season, get ready and organize your pack out in one of these four ways.
Organize By Room
This one is the simplest way to organize your pack out and typically how traditional movers pack up homes- packing up by room. That is, all the living room items get packed together and all the kitchen items get packed together. This makes it easy to know where to put things in your new home and to find things when you are searching for them on the other end.
The downside with this process is that you can’t typically pack early on. You have to pack as you finish up using rooms. So maybe this would work if you have an extra bedroom that isn’t being used, but typically a family is using the kitchen until the last moment.
Organize By Season
This packing organization takes some planning ahead, usually a year in advance. Packing by season is just that- getting all the winter gear together, all spring items together, etc. As the fall season ends, you go through your items – decorations, costumes, seasonally appropriate clothing, etc. You pack up the items to determine what makes the next move and store them in the appropriate bins or boxes.
All hiking gear for the spring gets organized and packed together. All the winter boots and snow gear get packed together.
This is especially fun if you get color-coded bins. Red and green for the holidays, black for Halloween/fall, pastel for spring. This makes items easily visible when glancing around the room.
This makes it easy to find seasonally appropriate items. If you are moving to Hawaii but still want to keep some winter gear, you can easily identify it and make sure to put it in storage because that snowsuit will not be useful there.
Organize by Item Type
Are you a collector of books? Or maybe you are a coffee mug person. Pack up like items together. All those cookbooks go in one box together. All the books get sorted into bins or boxes. If you are sorting your items, this is especially helpful as you can sort and find what you want to donate or keep as you do it.
This one may be tricky as you get to smaller groups of items, but this may also help you organize or purge items that you may not necessarily need.
Organize By Person
Want to make it easier to find the baby’s clothes or where you put your favorite book? Pack and organize items by person. You can go the extra mile in getting a certain color bin or label for each person, so you know who has each box or bin.
If there are older children or just adults in the home, you can even have each person pack their own belongings. This allows the person to go through their items to determine what needs to be packed and what can be donated.
If you have young children, packing this way allows you to go through items slowly and determine what you need to pack and move with. If your last baby no longer fits the 6-month-old clothing, maybe it is time to pick out sentimental items and donate or sell the rest.
The tricky part comes in common spaces like the kitchen or living room where there may be overlap between people. This may lead to another box or label type for those common areas.
Packing up your belongings can be made simpler with organization. How will you organize your move?
We PCSed many times over the course of my husband’s career. One of the ways that I prepared was by category and how useful things were. The movers would not remove anything from walls, so we were responsible for taking down photos and paintings. I would place all of those type of items in one place so that they were all packed together. After all, hanging things on the walls is the last thing we’d do in our new home. I would make sure that all of the linens were packed together, with the exception of one set of towels and one set of sheets for each person. Those were packed with each person’s extra clothing. We also made sure that basic tools (hammer, wrench, screwdriver, etc. were packed so that they were readily accessible separately from “basement or garage” items.
I like the idea of packing towels and linens with the clothing for each person. We have yet to do a door-to-door move without weeks in between, but I think a box for each person with those items in it would be essential.