Moving House? Useful Packing Tips.

With many students soon to be moving into new houses and halls of residence, we want to give all of you prospective movers a few tips to make your transition as stress-free as possible.

• Plan ahead. It’s easy to miscalculate the amount of time it takes to pack all your worldly possessions into little cardboard boxes. Best practice is to start early and pack slowly. Our moving checklist will provide you with a wealth of tips and advice to help plan your move. Planning ahead also allows you the time to purge items that you’ve been hoarding for years, but could probably do without.
• Use good quality boxes. Moving house can be an expensive process all round if you aren’t careful. Good quality boxes will decrease the chance of damage during transit and will give you peace of mind when they are out of your sight. Cheaper boxes can easily be crushed, and can be less stackable.
• Make a system. Don’t be haphazard in your approach – this can lead to confusion and stress. A good system is to simply pack room by room, starting with your least used. Choosing a system that works for you is important – randomly packing items for a move can cause you to forget important things and separate grouped items.
• Use Labels. Not only will this will prevent grouped items being separated, it also allows your unpacking process to be smoother as you will know what item is where. It also assists the delivery crew once they have reached the destination.
• Store heavy items separately. Pack your heavy items on their own in individual boxes. Transporting the items is easier as the package is smaller and more manageable, which enables you to have more purchase when lifting the item. Often, the heavy items are also more expensive and this prevents them being damaged by other items in transit.
• Be careful with fragile items. Use plenty of protective wrapping and store items individually if possible. This stops your items moving around during transportation.
• Keep important documents safe. The temptation may be to pack these along with the rest of your items in boxes, but you should keep all of your important documents together in folders and if possible, keep them on your person during the move.
• Make things easy for the removal company. If you prepare all your boxes in an easily accessible area before your removals company arrives, they will certainly appreciate it and be more likely to go the extra mile for you come the other end of the journey. Choose a place which is large enough for all the boxes but also has easy access – if you have a garage, this is ideal.

Hopefully these tips will allow your big move to run that little bit smoother.