Ready, Set, MOVE! Tips for Your Home or Office Move

This month, we are going to focus on the Olympics of Home and Office Organization — MOVING. For the next four weeks your NYC Professional Organizer will share strategies and tips to make your move much less stressful, and much more successful. Today we will focus on the most important part of a stress-free home or office move, and that is to start early and plan well.

Step 1: Organization — Make A Plan

Begin three or four months before the move. Make a binder to hold all of your relevant documents, meeting notes, receipts, an inventory of items to be moved, etc. Make a schedule of your anticipated home or office move, assigning tasks and deadlines for each stage, and assigning team leaders for each stage. Stages should include preparation, general clean out, sorting and purging, packing, moving and unpacking/settling in.

Step 2: Preparation

Create a list of services that you need to change for your home or office move, including utilities, internet provider, banking, mailing address, subscriptions, notifications for your job and your children’s schools, etc. If you are changing your bank, make sure your automatic payments are all redirected to your new account. Most of these changes can be done online, which makes things much easier for you. Be sure to keep a record of who you’ve contacted so you don’t lose track.

Research moving companies, and get several estimates for your move. Choose only well-recommended, licensed movers. Begin picking up packing materials — boxes, tape, paper wrapping. Home Depot sells moving boxes very reasonably, and one can often find used boxes for free online at freecycle.org

3. Fill In The Timeline

As you contact movers, utility companies, cable and internet, etc., make sure that you take note of when things will occur. If there is any construction, repairs, or cleaning of your

new place, make sure that you schedule activities when they can best be completed. For example, you should probably have your cable provider set up the system before your movers arrive.

4. General Clean Out

Go through your home, closets, garage, and office, looking for the obvious things to throw away, ala Spring Cleaning. Keep in mind that by scheduling time to do a serious clean out early in the process will save quite a bit of money as you won’t be paying to move items that will ultimately be discarded during or shortly thereafter the unpacking is completed.

The next three steps, Sorting/Purging, Packing, and Moving will be covered in my next two blogs. Getting through the above steps will make your home or office move organized and manageable, and help keep your stress levels to a minimum.