Pack It Up, Pack It In

Let me begin...

To start talking about packing. Ugh. Packing.

Isn't packing the best?! I feel like the hardest part is getting started. What room do I start with? How many boxes will I need? Why am I even doing this?!

There's a few ways to go about packing. You could take a bunch of empty garbage bags and starting throwing random shit into them (tempting, oh so tempting). Then you can just throw those garbage bags filled with your random shit into a landfill and start over again in your new apartment (also temping, but expensive and probably impractical). Or you could be incredibly anal and excessively label every box multiple times. This is what I did.

First, a ridiculously large number of boxes were ordered from U-Haul because shipping is free if you spend over a certain amount and unused boxes can be returned for the same price that they were purchased. Win and win.

Once the boxes arrived I went one room at a time, starting with our spare bedroom because I knew it would be the easiest room to pack. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) this room had turned into some kind of dumping ground for anything and everything that entered our home. See exhibit A:

This was actually taken after I started cleaning up in here. What a disaster. Thankfully most of the things in this room went into the garbage or donation pile making it a fairly easy room to empty out. Then I tackled the closets, the living room (which was mostly decor and furniture), the bedroom and finally, the kitchen.

Each box was given a room designation for the new apartment and a number. I carried around a notebook with me like it was my freakin' bible. Every time I packed a new box I would write the box number down in the notebook with a list of every.single.item in that box. Excessive? Probably. But when we started unpacking our 40-something boxes (yes, we own a lot of shit) and we needed to know where the spatula was I was on it. 

The notebook also listed every piece of furniture that was being moved because I am paranoid and was afraid that something would get lost or stolen or broken. Spoiler alert: Nothing was lost or stolen or broken in this move. Except maybe my sanity. That doesn't really make any sense. Just roll with it.

Sure, the husband thought I was a crazy person, especially as I ran around the apartment waving a little notebook around and screaming, "Where is my pen? GOD DAMMIT WHY DO I ALWAYS LOSE MY PEN?!" But when the movers showed up in North Carolina you can bet your ass he was grateful for his psychotic wife because he took my sacred little notebook and checked off each box and piece of furniture as the movers brought it in to make sure we weren't missing anything. Boom. I win again.

Anyways, those are my not-so-helpful packing tips. Get your boxes from U-Haul. Number your boxes and write down everything that goes in them. Don't lose your pen. Oh, and super insulate everything. Especially your fine china. Because when the movers pry that box of stupidly expensive dishes from your death grip on moving day you will thank yourself that you wrapped everything in 5,000 layers of bubble wrap. I know I did.