{"id":1858,"date":"2015-01-05T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T14:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yuriar.com\/katp\/?p=1858"},"modified":"2015-01-05T09:00:38","modified_gmt":"2015-01-05T14:00:38","slug":"moving-tips-from-a-former-military-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/2015\/01\/05\/moving-tips-from-a-former-military-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving Tips From a Former Military Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"movingtruck\"Moving is never easy.\u00a0 Most people think of the word “move” as a four letter curse word on par with the F-bomb.\u00a0 Moving with the military, while still no fun, is easier than moving on your own.\u00a0 Unless you are doing a DITY (Do IT Yourself) move in the military, they will send a crew out to box up your life, load it on the truck, transport it, and unload the boxes on the other end. You just have to clean the old place for your check-out inspection, handle all the paperwork involved, and unpack in your new place.\u00a0 The military movers even make an inventory list of everything in each box, so you can easily find the can opener on your first night in the new place.<\/p>\n

Moving without the military is a whole other animal.\u00a0 Suddenly you are responsible for packing, loading, transporting, and unloading all on your own.\u00a0 None of that includes the paperwork, arrangements for utilities, and everything else involved. However, there are somethings you can do to make it easier on yourself.<\/p>\n

The first thing to do – declutter your home. Anything that you do not NEED or WANT to take with you needs to go NOW. One of the things I learned years ago from FLYLady<\/a> – if you don’t need it, if it doesn’t make you smile, get rid of it. Decide what you need to live, decide what you want to keep, and toss the rest. You can take things to the local Goodwill or Salvation Army if you have time & the desire.\u00a0 If you don’t, just throw it all out.\u00a0 This serves two purposes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You don’t have to move all that crap you didn’t really want anyway.<\/li>\n
  2. Studies show that a decluttered home will be easier for potential buyers to visualize their own stuff in the house. The more cluttered up with knick-knacks and whoziwhatzits, the harder it is for potential buyers to look past all that and see the home.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Decluttering is not a process you need to complete before you start packing. You can declutter while you pack. For instance, as you pack your movies go through them, weed out the movies you didn’t like, don’t watch, and don’t really want to hang on to, then throw them out or donate them somewhere.\u00a0 Presto! You’ve just decluttered and packed all at the same time.<\/p>\n

    Second thing to do is to number your boxes & create an inventory.\u00a0 I did this in a spiral bound notebook, which my husband then put into Excel. I took this a step further as well by listing where we had stashed each box.\u00a0 I also went beyond that with our books. Being a family of readers, we have a lot of books.\u00a0 We use LibraryThing<\/a> to catalog our books. I created a “collection” for each box I packed.\u00a0 That way, if my kids wanted to read a specific book, I knew exactly which box it was in.\u00a0 Then I could consult my inventory list \"SmashedBurrito\"to find out where that box was located.\u00a0 When we moved, I changed the location notation to the new location – attic, storage room, closet #1, etc.\u00a0 While I unpacked each box, I changed the name of the collection on LibraryThing to reflect the new location of the books in the new home.\u00a0 So now, if my son wants to read My Life as a Smashed Burrito With Extra Hot Sauce<\/a>, I can tell him that it is supposed to be in the living room.\u00a0 If he’s moved it, that’s his problem.<\/p>\n

    Another thing – don’t mix rooms when packing. Living room stuff goes into a living room box. Kitchen stuff stays in a kitchen box.\u00a0 2Men&ATruck have a good list of other packing tips here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    When it comes to packing, I highly recommend getting your boxes from your moving company – we used Uhaul.\u00a0 At the very least, get a whole bunch of the same sizes from the same location.\u00a0 It will help when packing your truck if your box size is mostly uniform.<\/p>\n

    One thing to keep in mind while packing – whenever possible, never leave your boxes out in a main area while showing a home.\u00a0 Always hide them in the basement, attic, or closets.\u00a0 Potential buyers don’t want to see your boxes, and you don’t want them to feel like you are about to abandon the home before they decide.\u00a0 I packed all my figurines and books early on in the process, hiding the boxes in the attic & master bedroom closet. It helped to make the home seem larger and less cluttered, but at the same time, it was still a warm, inviting space.<\/p>\n

    So now you’ve started the decluttering process, and you’re making your inventory of numbered boxes while packing.\u00a0 But you still need to keep track of everything – your conversations with your realtor, your mortgage company, and every thing else.\u00a0 Remember that spiral bound notebook I kept my inventory in?\u00a0 Yup.\u00a0 Everything was in there.\u00a0 My list of things I needed to do, my records of phone calls & conversations with my realtor, credit counselor, mortgage company, everything.\u00a0 I made lists of the utilities, and notes about when to cut off things.\u00a0 I researched truck rentals, and kept track of prices.\u00a0 Receipts and business cards were stapled to pages in the notebook so they would be easily found when needed.\u00a0 Phone numbers of people I needed to call, play date schedules so the kids could say good bye to their friends, you name it, it was in the notebook.\u00a0 It became a BIG help because whenever I needed to refer to anything, it was in the notebook.\u00a0 DH wanted to know what still needed to be done – check the notebook.\u00a0 Where was that rental agreement? check the notebook.\u00a0 Whenever we researched something like the procedure for licensing the dog in the new state, it would get written in the notebook so we could refer back to it.\u00a0 Gun laws for safe transportation and storage in the new home – in the notebook.\u00a0 That notebook became invaluable.<\/p>\n

    So the notebook is a great help.\u00a0 But still – when are you supposed to do stuff like notify the post office, etc?\u00a0 Well, I used the Moving Checklist at Upack.com<\/a> for help with alot of that.\u00a0 There’s another good moving checklist at Mayflower.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Upack.com also has a great list of things to do when packing your truck<\/a>. Honestly, I left that aspect to DH.\u00a0 His years of military experience packing helicopters & air craft helped him maximize space and pack the truck like it was a giant game of Tetris.<\/p>\n

    So there you have it.\u00a0 My biggest tips for making moving easier. The biggest takeaway from this though should be the inventory.\u00a0 That right there saved my bacon and made life and unpacking so much easier.<\/p>\n

    What’s your best moving tip?\u00a0 Let me know!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Moving is never easy.\u00a0 Most people think of the word “move” as a four letter curse word on par with the F-bomb.\u00a0 Moving with the military, while still no fun, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family_life","category-randomness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/moving-house-checklist-300x276-1.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yuriar.com\/katp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}