7 Common Packing Mistakes to Avoid for Your First Move

7 Common Packing Mistakes to Avoid for Your First Move

Part of having an easy first move involves knowing how to pack different items. Here are common packing mistakes you need to avoid in your first move.

Keyword(s): common packing mistakes

Are you preparing for your first-ever move? Are you afraid you’ll make a big mistake? Well, good news, we can help. 

There are pretty easy ways to avoid some of the most common mistakes that people moving for there first time make.

Let’s go through seven of the most common packing mistakes and ways to avoid them!

1. Prepare in Advance

You need to make sure that you have enough supplies on hand for your upcoming move. It may seem like you have enough boxes and tape but that’s a hard thing to estimate sometimes.

Many companies recommend you have a minimum of five large boxes, ten small boxes, and eight medium-sized boxes per room in your house, although this can fluctuate depending on how much stuff you have.

If you’re using suitcases or other pre-existing containers for some of your moving, this will also affect what supplies you’ll need. Ultimately, it’s better to be safe than sorry!

2. Start Ahead of Time

Unless there’s an actual emergency, you should not begin packing for your move the day-of. That’s incredibly stressful, you’re likely to miss things, and it will delay your movers or other help you have. 

Ideally, you should be creating a plan for your upcoming move several months in advance. And, you should begin packing unnecessary items at least several weeks in advance.

Of course, there are items that you will have to wait until right before your move to pack. But, if you have everything else organized and packed in advance, those things will be a breeze!

3. Sort Your Items First

When you move, you’ll need to be prepared to have your things sorted. You need to consider the function of each item, along with the weight, to determine where exactly in your new home that item will be going.

Here are some of the categories you will need to use to sort out what you own:

• Kitchen items, like dishes and utensils
• Electronics, like television, stereo equipment, and video game systems
• Books, board games and other entertainment items
• Toiletries and other bathroom supplies
• Bedding, like sheets, pillows, comforters, shams, and the like
• Clothing which should be sorted based on the person and by the season

You may need some other categories based on what you own, but these should work as a good starting point for you!

4. Handle With Care

If you have fragile or specialty items, you need to be careful that you’re not just throwing them in willy-nilly. Items like instruments, fine china, sports equipment and art may have different specifications than the rest of your items.

Also, packing larger items can be particularly difficult when you’re planning your move — they may be too large or too heavy for you to be able to manage without hurting yourself or your stuff!

If you’re having trouble figuring out how to properly pack some of your items, companies like Muscleman Elite should be able to help you out!

5. Label, Label, Label

There’s nothing worse than not being able to find something that you really need. When you move, you’ll need to carefully label each box so that you will be able to find everything you need when you arrive at your new home!

Make these labels as clear as possible. You can also try creating an inventory of each box of an even better organizational system.

Organizing is especially important if you’re planning a long-distance move to a brand new location since there will be a bigger gap in time before you arrive at your new home.

6. Don’t Go Overboard

When you move, there’s probably a lot of things you won’t be able to take with you. Depending on your situation, there just may not be enough room in your new home.

Make sure that you have everything you absolutely need ready to go, first and foremost. Then, there are several options you can take to deal with the excess.

If you have enough disposable income, then you can choose to put items you don’t want to throw away but don’t currently have room for in storage.

Or, if you want to get rid of some of your excess items, you can use one of many different strategies to get rid of things you don’t need. You’ve heard of Marie Kondo, right? Experiment with her system to get rid of anything that doesn’t spark joy!

No matter how you choose to get rid of your old stuff, you should definitely be sure to donate any useable items to one of your local charities. In that way, downsizing can really help out your community!

7. Don’t Be Stubborn

Moving isn’t a one-person operation. If you have friends and family around to help you pack and get ready to move, you should absolutely ask them for help. That’s what friends and family are for! Plus, if they’ve moved before, they may have some helpful tips and tricks to help you out.

In addition, you can hire some help to make sure that your upcoming move goes nice and smoothly.

Most Common Packing Mistakes Are Easy To Get Around

See? It’s not as hard as you might think to avoid some of the most common packing mistakes. Just be careful and precise, and enlist as much help as you can scrounge up, and your upcoming move should be easy and breezy!

Are you planning a move in the Austin, TX area? Contact Muscleman Elite to get help on your upcoming move today!