You’re off on a new adventure and you’re moving out! But packing up all your belongings can be overwhelming as well as buying the boxes, bubble wrap, brown paper and packing tape and suddenly there are more costs draining the wallet.  Cleave and I lived in a one bedroom apartment without a storage space or a garage, we smugly thought that packing up and moving out would be a cinch. I’m sure there were even a couple of confident “this is going to be easy!” high fives too.  Until we started opening the cupboards.  Suddenly 5 years of life and belongings were spilling out of drawers, heaped under the bed, piled on top of the cupboards.  It felt like our things had been reproducing behind our backs.  Suddenly moving out became really daunting .  Here are a couple of things that helped us in the big move out:

–           Purge: don’t bring rubbish and dead weight with you. We all know the Keep, Donate and Chuck rule but go through every, YES EVERY drawer, container and cupboard one by one.  Take a good hard look at each and every item.  Does the item “spark joy”?  Be vicious and be brave. Even the small stuff adds up.  Socks that don’t match,  Tupperware with no lids, holiday decorations, old bits of wrapping paper.  How did we end up with six chopping boards? Why do we have sixteen bowls between the two of us?  Suddenly bags and bags of stuff are going to the bin/donation instead of schlepping it to the new place.

–           Sell:  Put up good pictures, multiple angles, check similar items so you know their price point.  Do a massive garage sale with bulk group items and slashed prices but whatever you do, do not return unsold items back to your house, give them to charity or invite your friends over for a free for all.

–           Be creative: Use what you have before buying packing items.  Bed sheets, towels and tea towels all came into use when bundling up picture frames, wine glasses, crockery, fragile items. Even just using them to line the base and the top of containers and boxes can help.  Use suitcases, backpacks, Tupperware.  Anything soft and unbreakable can go straight into heavy duty bin liners, roll up bundles of clothes still on their hangers.  A couple of fat heavy Saturday newspapers takes the place of packing paper.

–           Look for freebies before you buy.  Our local hardware store offered cardboard boxes as well as plastic bags so we took the box option whenever we bought something there. After a while we had a nice stack of empty boxes ready to go.  Your local greengrocer, whitegoods store, sports store might have the same deal or even have boxes out the back ready for rubbish.  Just make sure to ask nicely first before you take, and always try to buy something to support the store.

– Ask for help from your family and friends.  Ask well in advance and offer breakfast, lunch, pizza or beer as a thank you. Remember to return the favour when your friends need help moving as well.

The morning of the move was spent rushing all the final bits and pieces but as soon as our moving crew arrived it was smooth sailing. We can’t thank enough our friends who turned up at 7am on a Saturday to help lug all our belongings into the truck. Dream team you know who you are – you’re the best!