Organizing a move is a difficult task as it can be a really complex process that has a lot of variables. You have to think about so many different things in so many different directions that it is not easy keeping your head above water sometimes. Finding a good moving company is very important when planning a move. You also have to find a way to transfer your entire life (your family’s medical records, your children’s school records, and perhaps even transfer to a new job), as painlessly as possible. You also have to pack all of your belongings in a safe and efficient manner. This entails many things including having to label moving boxes properly, making an inventory list, decluttering, etc. Each of these is a very important segment of packing. We have thus prepared a guide for packing your belongings properly and how to label moving boxes.
You need to make an inventory list first
When it comes to moving, there are many things that people underestimate the importance of. Hiring a moving company is one of the most common ones, as some people have no faith in them. The importance of making an inventory list is one of these things too. Having a quality inventory list is one of the key things in planning a move in a proper way. If you are not sure what an inventory list is, in short, it is a full list of all of your belongings. There are several ways that it can be useful to you, which any good Chatham movers could verify, and it has a lot to do with how to label moving boxes the right way.
Chief benefits of having an inventory list
- It will help you with packing – The first, and probably the most obvious benefit is that you can use it to plan you packing properly. It is not just about using the best moving boxes, but also how you use them. Creating a separate inventory list for each of the rooms in your home is the most efficient way of doing it. This can be very useful when it comes to having to label moving boxes. Labeling them in sync with an inventory list will help you a lot.
- It will help you with unpacking – If you follow through the tips that we will give you later on in the text, you will have a lot easier time with packing, as well as with unpacking.
- Decluttering – Throughout the years you have surely hoarded many things that you do not need anymore. Once you list all of your belongings here, you can easily choose those you do not need anymore. You can then throw away things that are junk, or donate or sell others.
It can help with other things too
- It can influence the price of your move – When giving you an estimate, the company’s representative will have to take into consideration all of your belongings, their weight, worth and how bulky they may be. What you should is to get the prices of all of your belongings written by each item. Or do this at least for those more valuable ones. Getting a binding estimate from you movers can be a really good thing for your moving budget.
- Filing a moving insurance claim – Accidents sometimes happen through no one’s fault at all. Things can get lost or damaged due to various reasons. Hiring reliable movers such as Hoboken movers means that you won’t have to worry much during the move. However, if you do bump into negligent movers, and they end up damaging or losing your property, and you have to file a moving insurance claim, then you will need the inventory list as one of the documents.
How to use the inventory list to label moving boxes?
Using the inventory list to its fullest is not just about listing all of your items. You should make separate lists for each of the rooms in your home. Every room has its purpose and the items in it have their own special forms and roles. This leads to a logical conclusion that they should be placed together. Once you start labeling the boxes, you can mark the boxes code name by each of the items, so you know in which of the boxes is which item.
Different ways of labeling boxes
There are several ways you can do this, and they can be combined between themselves to a greater effect.
Colors
You can use colors in many ways to label moving boxes. The most common one is to use the one color for one room of your home. For instance, blue can be your bathroom and yellow can be for your kitchen. The idea is for the designation of colors to make sense to you. Blue can be associated with water so it can represent the bathroom. There are other ways to do the designation. For example, yellow can be the color of your cabinets in the kitchen, and the blue can be the color of the bedroom closet.
Numbers
Organizing the packing schedule can be tricky and it is important that you start with it on time. Once you start packing, have your inventory list and a pen or two by your side. Whenever you pack one box, mark it with a number. You can also use just the numbers to label moving boxes. How? You can denote one room with one specific number. Then each box that you pack for that specific room you can mark with the deserved number. For instance, Kitchen is labeled with 1. The fifth box packed in Kitchen should be marked with “1.5.”, the sixth one with “1.6” etc.
Rooms
You can alternatively simply use the names of the rooms. On each of the boxes, you can put the name of the room or just its starting letter. Then you can combine that with numbers and mark them in “R.XX” order, with R being the first letter of a room’s name, and XX is the number of the box. For example, it could be K.06, for the sixth box for kitchen. Just remember that you should put a note for each item on your list for the way it is labeled with.