Moving is a stressful time for your entire family, but especially for young children. Although…
There’s no doubt about it — moving can be a stressful time, but especially moving with kids. Not only do you have to get everything in order with your new home, but you also have to worry about transporting all of your possessions safely and securely. Add to that the need to pack your kids’ things too — where you have to deal with toys, clothes, accessories, teddy bears, and more — and it’s no wonder moving is one of the most stressful experiences in a person’s adult life.
Moving With Kids
How To Successfully Move With Kids: Expert Packing Tips
Thankfully, there are several packing tips you can use to make packing up your kids’ rooms as smooth and pain-free as possible. It takes work — you don’t want to forget anything, which can be especially complicated with lots of small items that can hide in nooks and crannies — but your busy schedule also prevents you from spending too much time packing. However, with a few packing tips in mind, you can learn how to pack for a move painlessly.
1. Use Clear Containers
When it comes to packing – for kids in particular – nothing is set in stone. Your child may decide at the last moment that he wants to wear his favorite T-shirt or play with his favorite toy, and the last thing you want to do is dig through dozens of boxes to try to find where you left it. That’s where clear containers come in — you can use them to make sure that you can find almost any item instantly, and can easily unlock the top instead of having to undo and then reseal packaging tape.
That’s where clear containers come in — you can use them to make sure that you can find almost any item instantly, and can easily unlock the top instead of having to undo and then reseal packaging tape. Clear containers come in a variety of shapes and sizes — from long and flat to square and rectangular — and can have features like wheels, snap-on lids, and built-in labels.
Another benefit to clear containers is that they can help you unpack more easily once you make it to your new home. You can make sure you know exactly what’s where more accurately than by just using labels, and can speed up the unpacking process by knowing where to look for certain objects.
2. Label Everything
This may seem like common sense, but it’s necessary: leave no box unlabeled. You absolutely have to know what’s in each box so that you can speed up the packing process, keep items of similar rooms together in one place and know where to find things if you need them immediately.
This is especially true for kids’ items, as you’ll have to deal with their questions and complaints if something is packed away that they want to access! Labeling will also help you deal with stressful concerns about forgetting things, as you can check off a checklist of items once you pack them, and know exactly where they are once you label them.
3. Pack Essential Items Separately
One of the things most people forget when moving is that they most likely aren’t going to unpack everything immediately. When you first arrive at your new place, you’ll have at least one night where you and your kids will be without access to most of your packed-away items. So, if you don’t want your kids to go without hygiene items, pajamas, toys or other essentials, pack a moving day bag for each child with everything they’ll need for the night (or two, or three).
4. Get A Babysitter
Moving day is much more stressful than many people anticipate, and if you want to take as much off of your plate as possible, hire someone to watch your kids while you’re dealing with movers, storage units, and everything else. Getting a babysitter who will take your kids to the park, keep them in one room of the house, or otherwise prevent them from getting in the way of the moving process can save you major headaches during the move.
5. Hire Professional Movers
Moving stuff out of your kids’ room, as well as the other rooms in the house, might tip the scale in favor of hiring movers for you, simply because of the volume of stuff that you’re going to have. That way you don’t have to worry about making multiple trips or hiring your own moving equipment, and you can ensure that transporting large objects like furniture will be as fast and easy as possible.
Remove the Stress of Moving
Just because moving can be a stressful process, doesn't mean it has to be. If you're moving with kids, use these 5 packing tips to make moving with kids easier on both you and your kids. To learn more about what On The Go Moving & Storage can do to make your move less stressful, contact us online today.
