h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am moving house in two weeks. The thing is I have done nothing but accumulate vast amounts of rubbish over the last two and a half years. Does any one have any good strategies for sorting out and packing?

Thanks

Hi italic abi!

The first thing I would do is sort the stuff into three piles.
Stuff you DEFINITELY want
Stuff you MIGHT want.
Stuff you definitely DON'T want.

Chuck the don't want away, and start again with the MIGHT want pile.

You should have one pile after a few sorts like this.

All the fragile stuff, wrap in lots of newspaper. Removal men NEVER handle with care.................

As a second idea, why not sell the don't want stuff in a garage sale, and make yourself some beer money!!!!!!!!

'G'

Throw out your rubbish! We moved house last November and I threw bags and bags of rubbish out. Have a boot sale, take stuff to your local charity shop. You'll be really glad you did when you move into your new place and it's clutter free. If you don't use it - lose it. You don't need it.
TOP TIP: Pack your kettle, tea bags/coffee etc at the top of a clearly labelled box so they can be unpacked as soon as you arrive. You'll need all the caffeine you can get!
Good luck!

Thanks - I am doing this without removal men! Eek!

Another tip.
(If you are in the UK)

Hire a skip, and put all the rubbish in that. Nosey neighbours can the help themselves to your dross!!!!!

'G'

That is a good tip! I like that one!

Hiring skips cost dollars! Call the local council office. You should find that they will come and take your big items of rubbish away for free.

Get a crew of friends together
Give the box of caffeine and the box of alcohol to someone who is less emotionally involved than you are/
Someone with a felt pen and post its label EVERYTHING.
Someone's who's been a boy scout, fold all the clothes you're keeping.
Clean the new place before you move in (this is a group activity and the beginning of a housewarming)
Clean the old place after you move out (ditto) especially if you hope to claim a deposit back on it.
Buy more bin liners than you think you're going to need. Get the Post-it person to label these as well so that you don't throw away the wrong one
Get someone who loves you to look after any animals or small children for the duration
At one stage in my life I moved 13 times in twelve years through three different countries without professional help
Plates etc - put a piece of kitchen paper between them and sellotape the pile together.
Very fragile things - pack in a bock of detergent. Use elastic bands to hold cutlery together.
Buy some air freshener and/or pot pourri
Have fun

Odd spelling there - bock is obviously the old English form of box

Snazzy list there!

The only other thing that I can add is if you expect not to be able to unpack immediately (takes me 3-4 days unless I take vacation time from work) pack a couple of comfy changes of clothes per person and just enough plates, forks, knives for a place setting for each person in a very accessible, very well labelled container. This way you won't have to dig for necessities while trying to systematically unpack.

Best of luck on the move!

Good point - better find somewhere for the mice to live for a bit!

Be ruthless when chucking out - you absolutely do not need that unmatched sock/tarnished lampshade etc. in your new house...and if you do, just buy another one.

Throw stuff. It's really cathartic, you will feel better for it, and it helps to make your new home a new era in your life. Especially bits of herbs/packets etc in your kitchen: don't fill your new home with stale things!

Pack in lots of small boxes, rather than a few big ones: easier to move. Label things with the room where you want them to go, then anybody can take them in the right direction.

If you use clothes, towels etc to wrap around breakables, write that on the box as well: 153 weeks after moving, I'm still finding missing clothes...

As well as the teas and coffees, pack tomorrow's underwear somewhere you can find them!

Good luck!

Yeah, that last post is good, lots of small boxes. Well, okay, you want sort of small and medium boxes, as some stuff is bulky but light. The most important things to pack in small boxes are books and CDs, which are rather dense and heavy. Really huge boxes tend to be useless. If something is that bulky, it either a) doesn't need a box or b) can be put into a large plastic bag and still doesn't need a box. I dunno what's typical there, but here I buy really large trash bags for that sort of thing. Also good for soft stuff like towels, bed linens, etc. Keeps them clean without having to waste boxes on them.

Speaking of towels, though, they can be great for packing the dishes in. Once done moving you'll probably want to wash both the towels and the dishes, but you'll probably want to do that anyway, so might as well put them to good use. Small boxes for the dishes, again. They're heavy.

Label the boxes. Doesn't have to be super-detailed, but anything you want for everyday use needs to be somewhere where you can find it. If you can, start with a general label that indicates what room it goes in, so if you *do* lose something, that might help narrow down which group of boxes. Pay attention to this room label as you stack boxes in the new place, else it's pretty useless.

Throw it out before you move it. Moving is a great time to sort out whether you need something or not. Haven't used/worn/whatever it in the last x years? Throw it out! If it might still be good to *someone*, you can set it aside for donating or whatever, but make sure you don't have to take that pile into your new place. Take it *directly* to where it needs to go. Otherwise you're asking for it to stay around another 5 years. (Another good method for this is to store stuff you're not using away and put "destroy after " such and such a date on them, 2 years from now, say, or something like that. Then, when you run across that box again, and you haven't opened it in 2 years, just throw it out, without even opening it. When I moved this time, I tossed a box like that.) Be really liberal in throwing away stuff. My method causes me to occasionally have to repurchase an item I threw away not long ago, but I like it better that way than accumulating and storing too many things.

Set up the bed and bathroom first. You'll want a shower/bath, and you'll want to sleep. Trust me. Almost anything else can wait until the next day.

Dunno what else. I had a very easy sort of "loosely-packed" move last time, since I didn't have to pack it into a vehicle at all, and I've never attempted to pack all my stuff into one trip. But the degree to which you need to do that determines how many people you need to help. If you need to load a truck, move, then unload it all in the same day, you need lotsa help.

Good luck.

Invest in a good-size, reasonably solid trolley. After carrying the first dozen boxes from your old house to the car/truck and from there into your new house, you will understand why.
It's a lot easier to load the trolley and wheel out a few boxes at a time. Saves time, energy and your back.

Oh, yes, that's excellent, provided you're on mostly flat terrain. I had to move all my stuff up two flights of stairs, and most of the flat walking was over grass. Something with wheels would have been pretty pointless.

Remembr, you can assemble an army of male helpers to make the job go quickly, but it'll cost you... beer. Give men beer, and they'll uproot your house and carry it down the block, if you ask them.

Yes that's my preferred method - see earlier posting. You can buy cheapish wine and women will do the same.
Don't throw all the old clothes until you've used them as dusters.
Have more than one set of keys to each end. It's very easy to lock yourself out.
Any decorating in the new place is easier done before you put furniture in it.
If none of your friends has a decent drill, hire one if you're going to be putting up pictures and curtains.

With our move, we did coloured paper labels off the laser printer. Having a red label on a box saying 'Kitchen' makes life easier on everyone instead of opening the back of the rental truck and saying, 'where does this go?' or 'what does that say?' if you simply write on boxes with marker.

Also, large boxes are perfect for stuffed animals.

And Abi, if you're interested in tossing that chair that belonged to William Penn, you've got my address.
(My family has lived in Pennsylvania since the 1600s, we've got a lot of stuff from back then, but having a chair that belonged to the Man would be awesome!)

See, somebody is always looking to help you get rid of your stuff.

We gave all our very small baby clothes to my sister in-law. She got married last year and she's thinking about having a kid so we buried her with stuff our kids won't need any more.

I'm bringing this back to the top of the list, in case it's any use to anyone flitting in the near future. Most of this info has also migrated to an edited article. I was going to put a link in, but there's half a dozen of them. Just put "moving house" into the search engine