Naturally, before you can begin to transfer your belongings into cardboard boxes, first you’ll need to decide what to keep when moving to another home. This is a very important step when moving your belongings between two homes simply because all the right decisions will enable you to save many hours of valuable time (packing and unpacking time).
But that’s not all. Packing nothing but the things you like, want and intend to use in the future will also help you save loads of money by lowering the packing expenses and decreasing the transportation costs.
Decluttering your home before a move is a must-do task, but deciding what to keep when moving can be much tougher than you think.
Here’s how to decide what to take when moving:
Step 1. Inventory your home to know what you’re up against
The best way to decide what to pack for a move is to ask yourself a series of essential questions that should simplify greatly the decision-making process. But before you can reach that Q&A session with yourself, there are a couple of important steps you’ll need to take, one by one.
The very first step to packing the right things for a move is to create a detailed inventory of all the items in your home. You may think you know well enough the number and nature of the household items under your roof, but human memory is fallible and you may have forgotten some of the things you own.
So, to refresh your memory, go through the contents of each room in your current residence and create a comprehensive inventory checklist.
As you’re building up your home inventory sheet, make sure you mark the important pieces of information about each item:
item description,
current condition,
cost,
sentimental value, and
additional notes.
Later, all of these inventory parameters will definitely help you decide the fate of each item in the home – whether to take that thing with you or whether to leave it behind.
See also: How to create a home inventory for moving
Step 2. Create three separate inventory piles
As you’re going through your possessions, you should sort them out into three distinctive piles: TAKE, NOT SURE, and LEAVE BEHIND.
The TAKE pile
Some of the items in your home will be no-brainers when it comes to solving the to-take-or-not-to-take riddle. Such must-move items include but are not limited to:
essential items that you will pack into your Open-First box,
valuables such as your jewelry, your priceless stamp collection, etc.,
high-quality furniture pieces, including antique furniture,
expensive electronic devices (electronics) around the house,
important documents,
artwork pieces, pictures, paintings, and decorations,
musical instruments,
sentimental items such as family heirlooms, special gifts, and so on.
Basically, any household item that you consider practical and valuable should be on that shortlist of items to pack when moving house.
The NOT SURE pile
As you’re sorting out your possessions, you will come across many items which you won’t know for sure whether to take with you or just leave behind.
Some objects that are typical of the NOT SURE pile include:
Old furniture. Most furniture pieces are big and heavy, which makes their transportation too expensive. You may really like your queen-size bed but moving it hundreds or thousands of miles away will probably cost more than buying a brand-new bed after the move. So, will the bed moving operation be justifiable in the end? Read on to figure this out.
Clothes. Once you start going through your clothes, you’ll most likely ask yourself, “Will I ever wear this again?” on multiple occasions. Sure, clothes are not as large and heavy as furniture pieces, but packing too many clothes that you’ll never wear again and only wonder where to store in the new home won’t make much sense either.
Books. Books are super heavy when packed together in boxes, so it’s high time you finally thinned out your book collection before initiating the packing job.
Of course, this will be the toughest pile to tackle as you just won’t be sure what to do with some of those items. The good news is that the questions in the next step (Step 3) will facilitate the decision-making process so that you don’t lose too much valuable time stuck in indecision.
Must-read: Is it better to move your furniture or buy new after the move?
The LEAVE BEHIND pile
What to leave behind when moving? Include in this pile items that you never liked, and rarely or never used but ones that are still in good condition so that they can continue to be useful to other people.
Remember that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Interestingly enough, you’ve got the largest number of options when it comes to the LEAVE BEHIND category of household items – you can sell them (either online or at a garage sale), you can gift them to friends, family members or neighbors, or you can choose to donate them, thus doing something good for the community.
Clearly, the LEAVE BEHIND group will consist of things that are now too outdated, too worn out or simply too broken to be of any use to anyone. Don’t forget to recycle properly those discarded items.
Important note: You are not allowed to pack dangerous (flammable, corrosive and explosive) items for moving as they fall into the non-allowables category. Follow the link below to first recognize those hazardous items and then to learn how to dispose of them properly before packing for a move.
What things not to pack when moving: List of non-allowable items
Step 3. Ask yourself the right questions
As you can suspect, it’s the NOT SURE pile of household items that will give you the hardest time when sorting it out for packing. Whenever you’re in doubt about what to do with an item, ask yourself these very questions while you’re getting ready to move out:
Is the item practical and useful? How often do you use it – daily, often, from time to time, almost never, never?
Is it functional and easy to use?
Do you need it? Do you really intend to use it in the future?
Does it make your life better in any way?
What’s its current condition? How much longer will it last?
Is it a high-quality product that’ll be difficult or impossible to replace?
Will you be able to use it in the new area and the new home?
Will it fit into the new apartment or house? (especially true for large furniture, appliances, and pianos)
Will it match the décor of the new residence? (especially valid for furniture, area rugs, curtains, etc.)
Do you have a designated place for the item in the new house? If not, will you have enough space to store it?
Does it have any sentimental value for you?
Is it an irreplaceable item? Collector’s items, family heirlooms, vintage items, unique pieces of art and other very rare objects are often irreplaceable, which means you’d better take them with you.
One final piece of advice: Don’t go too far
Getting rid of unnecessary items is something you just have to do in order to lower the moving costs, cut the packing and unpacking time and create more space in the new home.
However, it’s possible that you get carried away in the decluttering task and throw away something or somethings that you shouldn’t have. If you’re not sure what to do with an item, give yourself some more time to figure it out.
Ultimately, if it’s something small and light, then it won’t take much space in the moving truck and it won’t affect significantly the total shipment weight either. In which case, you can choose to skip the tough decision now and decide the fate of that particular item after the move.
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