Part three: Getting ready for moving day
So you’ve sorted through all your belongings and have donated, recycled and regifted like mad. You’ve shopped carefully for a mover, consulting the PUC website, checking with friends and neighbors, and getting in-person estimates. You’ve at last selected a mover and set a date. It might seem you should be able to rest easy. But according to area experts, getting ready for moving day requires yet another cycle of preparation.
How so? Professional movers function at a swift and unrelenting pace, experts agree. Once they arrive, you can expect a whirlwind of activity. Especially if you have hired them to pack as well as move, their task list must be clearly defined. Indecision, confusion and disorganization will only create delay. And delay translates to more labor hours — and more money out of your pocket.
When movers come to pack, “they slide through a house,” says Gayle Grace of All Things Home Organizing in Oakland. “They’re not stopping to ask, ‘Do you want this packed, do you want that packed?’ ”
Whether you plan to hire a professional organizer to prepare for your move or expect to do it on your own, there are common-sense steps you can take to make moving day flow more smoothly.
“We do something called moving prep,” advises Grace, “which is going through the house and making sure that you’re ready for whoever is coming to pack you.”
Eliminating what she terms “booby traps” — spill-proofing leaky bottles and tubes, for example — can be enormously helpful, she claims.
Not surprisingly, the kitchen merits special attention. “You want to go through your kitchen and … be sure that bottle tops are on tightly, that the sugar is out of the sugar bowl, that the salt and pepper shakers are in a Ziploc bag,” instructs Grace.“Make sure that coffee grounds are not in the coffee maker,” she continues, “that there’s no water in the coffee maker. Make sure crumbs are out of the toaster. (When) all these things are done in advance, it will save you (from) some real disasters on the other end.”
And it’s important to be realistic about what you need to move, whether you are relocating across the country or across town.
Take care, counsels Grace, “that you’re not paying the movers to pack and move a quarter of a bottle of olive oil that you’ve had for 10 years or … 4-year-old bottles of spices.”
Make sure, for example, that “both shoes in a pair are together on the floor of your closet,” advises Grace.
“If you have important, fragile items like a pair of candlesticks, make sure the pair of candlesticks is together on the dining room table with a note that says ‘extremely fragile’” she suggests.
What you want to avoid when moving day rolls around, Grace says, is facing “a drawer that contains a toothbrush, a hammer, a shoe, an old coffee filter and 12 packages of soy sauce.” That level of disorganization, she states, can prove almost catastrophic.
“If you haven’t taken the artwork on your walls down in 20 years,” notes Grace, “there (will be) 20 years worth of dust on the back of the picture. (Pre-move) is the time to take them off and dust them down.” She also suggests “making sure that laundry is clean.”
In addition, moving items that are clean helps ensure you get off to a dust-free, lint-free, worry-free start in your new home.
Moving out of a home is a multi-step process. Prepping for moving day is just one of those steps. Painstaking though it may be, putting in the effort will pay off as you transition to moving and unpacking at your new home.