Moving tips

I am far from an expert in this area, and this is really only the second time I've (we've) moved (I don't count college, because I could fit everything in my car). But after going through this, we definitely fell into a groove.

The most obvious part of packing are finding boxes. We had a bunch from the last time we moved, and we kept them in the attic, but I had no idea we would need as many as we did. I guess we HAVE doubled our family in the past 5 years! Our boxes filled a 10x10 storage unit (no furniture except some bookshelves). After quickly blowing through the cardboard boxes we had and using all the rubbermaid boxes we had, we decided to order some boxes. We jumped on U-haul's website and ordered $66 in boxes. After I clicked "submit order" I smacked my forehead. WHY DIDN'T WE ASK PEOPLE ON FACEBOOK!? We received a TON of ideas, and between our friends who run the local Little Caesars, to a convenience store owner, and someone who works at the poultry farm (those boxes were brand new- no ick factor there) we were able to round up plenty.

Fortunately U-haul accepts all unused boxes for 100% money back. All $66 worth was returned. Lesson learned! Turn to your friends first! An extra bonus? U-haul refunded the $66 plus $10 in tax. We didn't pay tax online, but they returned it with tax. Josh questioned it but they said there wasn't anything they could do. Since the U-haul store was 45 minutes away I considered it gas money!

Also conveniently the week that we needed newspaper to wrap fragile stuff in was the week my newspaper membership ran out. Obviously I'm not renewing since we are moving, but it would have been nice to have that. Instead I turned to our closets. Josh had started packing his clothes and they quickly began filling up a big box. I started grabbing T-shirts to wrap platters, dishes, and glasses. They worked like a charm! And we were able to completely empty the box so we had an extra box to pack stuff in!

We kept a plethora of boxes in our attic of things that still have warranties. Although some of the boxes were used to house their original items (my sewing machine, stand mixer, and Silhouette), most weren't going to be used for that. So we used them to pack other things! We'll still be able to keep the boxes with the warranties, and they double as packing space.

Also, I have an over-abundance of flat rate boxes from the post office. I use them to ship sewing orders, but since I haven't been sewing much, I haven't needed to ship much. The medium flat rate boxes were perfect between fragile frames! I am in NO WAY saying to go out an get these boxes to move-- that would be wrong. But since I had them, and I plan to use them after we move, they did double duty (they moved to our new place and they helped protect fragile things).

The corners of my house served the biggest purpose in this whole process. I had a corner for yard sale things, a corner for consignment things, a corner of stuff we were actively packing, and a corner of things going to my parents house. We'll move in with them for a little bit so I had to think through-- "Will I use this in the next month" with every.single.item I packed. But sectioning off everything helped me keep my sanity.
This was my pile that was going to my parent's house:

I kept all the consignment stuff in our bedroom so I made sure I didn't mix it up with anything else!

Yard sale stuff went in another corner by the front door:

My only other saving grace through this process was my index cards- just like my attic storage that I ripped off from Michelle Duggar.

As I packed the boxes, I wrote the general contents on a card. I didn't write everything, just the major things.

I believe we eventually got to box 68. Then I would label the box with a simple number. (instead of writing the contents all over the outside of the box).

All the cards are being stored in the same attic box. The index card box came with us to my parents house. Now we know what's basically in every box in storage.

We filled up 2 10ft.x10ft. storage units total with our stuff. 1 unit was for furniture, the other for boxes.  I'm not even really sure how we fit everything (all our furniture, washer/dryer, etc).