Our Top 20 Favorite Moving Tips and Hacks

If you’ve lived in a major city (espe­cial­ly New York) for any amount of time, you know that mov­ing is the absolute worst. It can be a total night­mare between pack­ing, arrang­ing a rental truck, phys­i­cal­ly mov­ing your stuff, and not get­ting a park­ing tick­et. The good news is that there are lots of mov­ing tips and tricks that you can use to make the process a bit eas­i­er. We’ve scoured social media to find some of the most cre­ative mov­ing tips you can use for your next move. 

While there are lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of sup­posed hacks out there, here are the ones that are actu­al­ly helpful. 

Moving Tip #1: Take it slow

If pos­si­ble, don’t rush your move. Instead, pack a cou­ple of box­es a night or set a timer and pack for 1 hour a day. This will help min­i­mize feel­ing over­whelmed by the move. This can be done with unpack­ing too. 

Moving Tip #2: Reuse boxes

Need box­es for your move? Rather than hunt­ing at the back of shops or shelling lots of cash at the office sup­ply store, check out your local Face­book Mar­ket­place to see if any­one is get­ting rid of mov­ing box­es. You may even be able to get them for free just by tak­ing them off some­one else’s hands.

Moving Tip #3: Close out contracts early

Take the time to send out notices of your move to your util­i­ty com­pa­nies before you move. This will help keep you from get­ting charged for util­i­ties on your old apart­ment after you’ve already moved into a new one. Plus, it’s one thing off your to-do list when mov­ing into your new place.

Moving Tip #4: Pack a bag

Pack all the essen­tials you’ll need the first one or two nights in your new place, so you don’t have to dig through box­es or run out and get duplicates. 

Moving Tip #5: Color code it

Label all your box­es with col­ored stick­ers accord­ing to which room they belong in, or for a step fur­ther, the area of the room. Just remem­ber to label the side of the box so you can still see it even if the box­es are stacked. Make the job even eas­i­er by col­or-cod­ing a floor plan of your new apart­ment, so you know where to put each box when you’re unpacking. 

Moving Tip #6: Keep your place

Los­ing the end of the pack­ing tape is the worst! Pre­vent this by sim­ply stick­ing a paper­clip to the tape when you are done using it, and always remem­ber to dou­ble tape!

Moving Tip #7: Pack by weight

Pack your heav­i­est items, such as books, in a wheel­ie suit­case or small box­es to keep your box­es man­age­able. This will help you make sure you don’t make box­es too heavy to lift. 

Moving Tip #8: Avoid tangles

If you’re pack­ing jew­el­ry, string your neck­laces through straws to keep them from get­ting tan­gled. Also, the best way to trans­port jew­el­ry is in some­thing small (such as a purse). This helps pre­vent it from get­ting lost in the shuf­fle or slip­ping through any creas­es in boxes. 

Moving Tip #9: Trash bags are your friend

When it comes to mov­ing hang­ing clothes, garbage bags are a pop­u­lar hack. But, rather than cut a hole in the bot­tom, use the bag right side up, hook­ing the strings over the coat hang­ers. This way, you can reuse the garbage bag, and your clothes safe­ly get to their new destination. 

Moving Tip #10: Keep silverware in line

Most of the time, when we pack, we tend to dump all of the sil­ver­ware into a box. But what if there was an eas­i­er way? Sim­ply take plas­tic wrap and wrap it around your sil­ver­ware orga­niz­er to keep all of your sil­ver­ware in place dur­ing the move. Plus, it keeps it clean, and you don’t have to rewash it before putting it away. 

Moving Tip #11: DIY it

Save mon­ey on Space Saver bags by mak­ing your own. All you need is a garbage bag and a vac­u­um clean­er. Place your clothes, bed­ding, or pil­lows in the garbage bag. Then stick the vac­u­um hose in the bag, wrap­ping the bag tight­ly around the hose. Then sim­ply tie a knot in the garbage bag. You can then eas­i­ly pack these in box­es, let­ting you move more stuff in less space. Plus, you can reuse the garbage bags at your new place. 

Moving Tip #12: Spark joy

Marie Kon­do your place while you pack. If it doesn’t bring you joy, leave it behind. Don’t drag it to your new apart­ment only to take up space and col­lect dust. Give it a new home. If it’s cloth­ing in good con­di­tion, con­sid­er sell­ing it on Posh­mark or Face­book Mar­ket­place. If it’s fur­ni­ture, resell it on a site like AptDeco. 

Moving Tip #13: Take photo evidence

Get your elec­tron­ics back up and run­ning quick­ly by tak­ing a pho­to of all wires before you unplug them. This will help you know exact­ly which wires go where so your sys­tem is back up and run­ning in no time. You can do this for oth­er things to! Take pho­tos of areas you have dec­o­rat­ed in a spe­cif­ic way, like a book­shelf, so you can redec­o­rate the same way.

Moving Tip #14: Measure everything!

Is your cur­rent fur­ni­ture too big for your new space? Always mea­sure your fur­ni­ture and new space to ensure it will fit. Don’t for­get to mea­sure the door­ways too. If not, sell your fur­ni­ture on Apt­De­co. Not only will you get a bit of cash to fund your move, but Apt­De­co will also deal with dis­as­sem­bling your fur­ni­ture and mov­ing it to its new home for you! These mea­sure­ments will also help when buy­ing new furniture.

Moving Tip #15: Disassemble in style

When dis­as­sem­bling fur­ni­ture, take a pho­to of it before you touch it. You may also want to take some in-between shots to know exact­ly how to put it back togeth­er again. Also, Keep any small screws or pieces in a labeled ziplock bag.

Moving Tip #16: Slide your furniture

Invest in fur­ni­ture slid­ers for mov­ing heavy fur­ni­ture and appli­ances. All you have to do is slip one under each foot of the piece of fur­ni­ture, and you can eas­i­ly slide it along the floor. Keep in mind that this won’t help you with the steps but can sim­pli­fy part of the process. If you don’t want to spend any more mon­ey, lay­er up some card­board or lay card­board down on the path you’ll take with your fur­ni­ture to make it a bit easier. 

Moving Tip #17: Keep hardware safe

Mov­ing a chest of draw­ers? Sim­ply swap the hard­ware to the inside of the draw­ers. Use pack­ing tape to make a tem­po­rary pull tab to open the draw­ers again. Then wrap it up with cling wrap or a mov­ing blan­ket with mov­ing bands to pro­tect your fur­ni­ture and safe­ly trans­port it in one piece. 

Moving Tip #18: Wheel it out

Don’t risk scratch­ing the floors of your apart­ment (bye-bye deposit). Instead, use a dol­ly when­ev­er you can. If you don’t have access to a fur­ni­ture dol­ly, con­sid­er invest­ing in a shoul­der dol­ly which can help make lift­ing heavy fur­ni­ture a bit eas­i­er on your back. 

Moving Tip #19: Keep corners safe

Get­ting your secu­ri­ty deposit back means not hav­ing any holes in the wall. Make the job easy by putting put­ty in a ziplock bag and cut­ting the cor­ner. Smooth out with the includ­ed put­ty knife or just a plas­tic knife. An old pas­try bag would also work. 

Moving Tip #20: Breathe!

Per­haps the most impor­tant of all tips is to remem­ber to breathe. It’s just a move and not the end of the world. So take a deep breath and keep breathing.

Once you get to your new home, find all the fur­ni­ture and home decor that you need on Apt­De­co. Not only will you make your new home look fan­tas­tic, but you’ll also give new life and pur­pose to fur­ni­ture look­ing for a new home. 

Have any oth­er inge­nious mov­ing tips we missed? Let us know in the com­ments below.