moving tips
February 3rd, 2010I’m moving. In a few short weeks, I will be occupying an adorably crumbling old Spanish-style apartment in the Melrose/Fairfax area of Los Angeles. After living near the beach for nearly seven years, I’m actually excited to explore a new neighborhood – despite the slightly longer commute to work. A flea market within walking distance? Friends down the street? A carpoolable coworker a block away? Sign me up.
Though the move is still a couple weeks away, I’m packing up and assembling some helpful tips now:
- There are many places to get free boxes. The United States Postal Service is one of them. You can order priority mail boxes – 12″ x 12″ x 8″, good for books – and they’ll ship them to you for free. Now, this isn’t as earth-friendly as reusing boxes from other sources, but it’s very convenient if you strike out at the grocery store or on craigslist. Grocery stores are more likely to have boxes if you go at 6 or 7 in the morning when they open, and liquor stores are more likely to give you boxes if you also buy liquor.
- Start packing and giving away early. I know some people prefer to block out a couple days and pack all at once, but since I work more than full time during the week, I can only pack/move on weekends and spending an entire week with everything all packed up is impractical. Start as early as possible, even before you find a new place, and go through each room, closet, shelf, cabinet, and cupboard and get rid of everything you would loathe moving. The less you start off with in a new apartment, the better.
- List each box’s contents. Because you’re starting early and with very little, right? And I don’t mean writing down every single thing on the box. I mean number each box and keep a running general list of what’s in it in a text document on your computer that will be easy to look up later. Where are the produce bags? Why, in Kitchen #5, of course.
- Keep a couple clearly marked boxes of essentials for the first few days. We called this the “mission critical” box last time I moved, and it contained important documents and items we didn’t want to misplace. This set of boxes can include crucial paperwork, a tape measure, clean sheets, toilet paper and toiletries, medications, towels, a few days’ worth of clothing, a shower curtain and rings if there’s no door, a few forks/knives/spoons/cups, iPod speakers, and screwdrivers (you never know).
- Obviously, take pictures of the new place before moving too much in.
- Schedule internet/TV hookups as soon as possible.
- Use postal mail forwarding, but don’t rely on it. Make a list of everything that absolutely needs to get to you – credit cards, banks, DMV, utilities, loans, family and friends – and change your address with them online, over the phone, or through the mail when necessary.
- Sometimes it’s worth it to pay for an extra week or two in your old and new places, if possible, to give yourself plenty of time to clean and move and clean. Since I have pets, I never give notice until I’ve found another place, so I always have to double up on rent for at least a couple weeks. Though expensive, it makes for a less stressful move.
- In walkable areas (like I’ll be moving to), find one new place to walk to for food on the first night. Nothing will be unpacked enough to cook, and ordering in will force you to sit and look at everything you’ve yet to unpack. Get out of the messy zone for a while.
Let’s hope I follow my own advice and start purging and packing now.

























