Packing Tips For Moving Across The Country
Beyond planning ahead for your move, there may be other things to keep in mind when relocating over a long distance, too. Here are a few of our tips for how to pack your things as safely and efficiently as possible when moving across the country.
Use Sturdy Boxes And Include Packing Materials
When moving a short distance, reusing old boxes, bags and moving supplies isn’t likely a big deal – but when you’re transporting your belongings across mulitiable states, potentially over 1,000 miles, having sturdy packing materials is a must. You don’t want your stuff to be damaged or lost during the journey, so it’s crucial to make sure you are only using sturdy moving boxes with solid bottoms and sides as well as necessary packing materials like bubble wrap and packing peanuts to hold items in place and prevent breakage. Thoroughly taping or otherwise sealing your boxes before placing them in a truck or other container for transportation is also a good idea to assure nothing falls out.
Label Boxes Clearly
When you unpack in your new home, you aren’t likely going to want to re-sort all of your items, so it’s important that you sort them by room and by item category, as mentioned earlier. Once you’ve done that, you’ll also want to make sure your boxes are labelled clearly on the outside. After your boxes are closed and sealed, you won’t know what’s inside, so specific labels are a must. Labeled boxes will save you a lot of trouble by telling you exactly where each box needs to go.
Load Furniture With Lightweight Items
If you’re struggling to find room for everything while loading up a moving truck or container, consider filling up your furniture with lightweight items. Things like dressers, desks and other pieces of furniture with drawers can be filled with clothes and other light items to save space and reduce the number of boxes you’ll need to load.
Ship Possessions
If necessary, you can even ship some of your belongings to your new home via the U.S. Postal Service. This is a great idea for those moving that might have a light enough load to move by themselves, minus a few things they could ship to their home to unpack upon arrival. Clothes and other small items might be easy and fairly affordable to move this way.
Use A Storage Unit
If the idea of your home being full of boxes for months is stressing you out, you may want to consider getting a storage unit near your new home, temporarily. This will give you a place you can keep boxes while you slowly unpack and find room for everything without filling your home with clutter. The average private storage unit costs $100 – $300 per month to use
Purchase Moving Insurance
Since you’re moving a long distance, it’s probably a good idea to consider moving insurance. Moving insurance covers loss of or damage to your possessions during a move. If there happen to be any problems or surprises during your move, moving insurance will reimburse you to cover it.
There are many different types of moving insurance you can invest in, but generally you can get it from either a moving company or a third-party company. Moving companies generally offer coverage of items under their care up to a certain dollar limit whereas third party insurance providers might cover things that the moving company wouldn’t have control over or damage to items not inside the moving truck or other method of transport.
