A Mom’s Ultimate Guide for Moving from One House to Another

Learn moving tips & tricks, etiquette for how to leave a home, how to save money moving (and still have friends), and other words of wisdom from an experienced moving Mom’s point of view. If your Mama didn’t teach you how to successfully move from one house to another without losing your mind, take my hand and I’ll teach you the ways…

Our moving experiences/ expertise

My husband and I got onto the subject of moving the other day. As the conversation continued, I realized I have passionate thoughts on the topic.

Not to brag or anything, but I’m sort of an expert in moving. From the time I left my rural Montana childhood home and followed my husband up to the wilds of Canada over 32 years ago, I’ve moved and settled into 10 different homes/spaces.

Aside from the emotional part of moving (and leaving houses & people I’ve fallen in love with), I absolutely love moving. I find it’s like an exciting challenge equivalent to plopping down on the couch and solving the daily Wordle puzzle.

I’ve experienced enough horrified looks when I mention that fact, that I realize not everyone shares my excitment for the process of moving from one house to another.;)

Not only have I experienced the moving process from a personal point of view, but I’ve also been on the other side of the process, too.

For 24 years, my husband and I lived & worked at a year round camp & retreat center. During that time, we observed thousands of campers and staff come and go.

Some managed to leave with everything they arrived with. Many left a staggering pile of debris behind that we as staff had to deal with. (It’s not fun…)

Before we begin, however, I want to address the cost of moving. If your budget allows, there are moving companies that specialize in packing and moving. I’ve heard they will do absolutely everything for you – for a price! I’ve never used a moving company personally, but if you choose to do so, be diligent to seek a reputable company to avoid moving fraud.

Other moving options are to rent a moving truck and drive it yourself, or borrow trucks and trailers from friends & relatives to transport items from place A to B. Or if you are a student heading to college your “moving truck” might be your parents’ car!

Now, let’s get this moving party started. Grab and pen and take notes. It’s time for the A, B, Cs of moving!

1. Ask yourself what the perfect moving day looks like to you.

There are a LOT of moving parts when it comes to moving from one house to another. So, to prevent overwhelm, it may be helpful to start at the END, and describe what your absolute dream moving daying looks like.

Do you want it to go smoothly with lots of organization, or do you want it to by a wild experience with chaos reigning everywhere?

Get specific. Ask yourself these questions:

• Who is there to help you on moving day? What are they going to do?
• What kind of vehicle is moving your items? Is it a friend’s truck & trailer, rental moving truck, or something else? Have you chosen something you’re confident your things will fit in?
• When you wake up on moving day, what will your current house look like? Will everything but your breakfast items be packed neatly in labeled boxes, or is nothing even in boxes yet? (Heaven help us all if you haven’t even started boxing things up…Mom Note: It is RUDE to ask friends come to help you move on moving day and they walk in to discover you haven’t boxed things up yet. That should have been completed before moving day!)
• How are you going to clean the house you are leaving? Are you going to do it yourself (if so, when?) or hire it out?

And, in case it is unclear to you, here is your goal: Leave your house with not a single item left behind and clean as a whistle! You want to get your full rental deposit back because you’ve left your place so nice – or you want to leave the next owners with a lovely house that’s move in ready.

Take it from someone who has been in all the scenarios. It is so very frustrating to work so hard leaving a house that is empty and clean, only to discover a filthy dirty house on the other end with former tennant’s stuff left behind! Even though you may think your precious items that you’re leaving behind are “worth something and they can sell it”, heed this Mom tip: Items left behind are a burden to the landlords and they really don’t want to deal with them!

Once you have figured out how you want moving day to look like, start working backwards with your to do lists to create a step by step plan to make it happen.

2. Be clear about roles and responsibilities

If you are single and reading this, clearly you don’t have a partner that will be moving with you, so some of this may not apply, but for the rest of you…moving will most likely put a strain on your relationship, and you’ll have to communicate your way through it.

As with everything, don’t assume you can read your partner’s mind! Communicate about all the details, and divide up the tasks needed to accomplish.

If friends offer to help in the moving process, have in mind specific tasks that they can help with and instruct them in detail.

In our case, I love packing and organizing boxes, so that was what I naturally was drawn to doing. Also, most of the household stuff is my responsibility, so I was able to organize it all in a way that made sense to me.

My husband worked out the dozens of logistical decisions – like moving trucks, dates of the moves, rental agreements, friends with strong backs, appliance care and move out, etc… He also went through and purged his own things.

Here’s a big tip: Don’t throw out anyone else’s stuff without their permission. I may have made some mistakes in that department, my boys tell me.;)

3. Commence packing earlier than you think you should

If you want moving day to go smoothly and not feel rushed and frazzled into making decisions, then start the process right away! You’ll most likely need to get yourself some boxes as a first step. Grocery and liquor stores are good for that. Or, you can go to UHaul and even buy boxes if you choose that route.

Moving will make you realize you have way more stuff than you thought, and hopefully you’ll use it as an opportunity to pare down your belongings to the very best items that you need, love, and enjoy using. (This article on how to declutter your home has tips on purging items.)

If moving day is still a long time off, start with the storage items you haven’t looked at for a long time. Systematically go through the shelves, boxes, and bins and separate things into 4 categories:

• Throw away
• Sell (If you’re going to have a garage sale, put that in the plan!)
• Donate
• Pack

As you go through your items, it’s helpful to actually deal with the throw aways and donates right away. Not only will it free up space, it will show you you are accomplishing great things, too!

I’ve created a free printable decluttering planner to help with the process of sorting through your belongings. Click here or the button below to get yours today!

4. Diligently label moving boxes smartly to help on the other end

Labelling boxes is yet another thing I absolutely love doing, but you do what works best and makes sense for you. Here are a few ideas:

• Label items in boxes according to what room they are going to need to go in in your new home. Some people put a different colored sticker on for each different area. This way, the people helping you move will know where to put things without having to ask you each time.
• Keep a binder with an itemized list to correspond with each box. That way, if you need to find something specific, you can look on the list and find the corresponding box it will be in. (I loved this idea and tried it for the beginning part of one of our moves. But, it just became too time consuming in the end. You can read more details on box labelling for moving here.)

5. Extra care should be given when packing boxes

Fragile items (especially dishware and glasses) need to be packed carefully so they don’t break in transit. Use dishtowels, aprons and other soft items you already own as soft packing filler to help save space and protect your fragile items. You will want your boxes packed full enough that nothing rattles around when it is shaken. Other good box fillers are newspapers, tissue paper, and bubble wrap.

Be sure to pack books in small boxes. They are extremly heavy, and large boxes of books can be terribly hard on the backs of those carrying them.

Heavy objects work best at the bottom of the box and lighter, more fragile items on the top.

Another space saving tip is to pack the boxes completely full. Try not to have half full boxes, or boxes that won’t close. Both will make packing into the trucks more difficult and take up more space.

6. Find a good solution for the after move house cleaning

Once you have every single item moved out of your house, you will have accomplished a VERY big task. (Go ahead and pat yourself on the back.)

However, the job isn’t finished until the house is cleaned. (It is helpful if you have done some deep cleaning throughout the process of packing up each room.) I admit, cleaning is the hardest part for me personally. It is so hard to leave the new place with boxes stacked everywhere and go back to a completely empty place to clean it. You will most likely be super tired by this point, and deep cleaning will feel like an absolutely monumental task.

You can handle that detail however you feel best. Obviously, the most budget friendly way to cross that off the to do list is to do it yourself. If you have some good friends that offer to help you move, maybe you want to suggest they help with the cleaning. However, do not be frustrated with them if they don’t meet your cleaning standards. The cleaning task is your responsibility, not theirs.

When we moved from our lovely rental home to the townhouse we now live in, we cleaned the rental ourselves (and tried to make sure we left it much cleaner than we found it!), but we negotiated in our contract that our townhouse would be cleaned by professional cleaners before we moved in.

That part was absolute bliss. The house was spotless and smelling fresh when we opened the door to move in. We also scheduled into the process a professional carpet cleaner to come in and clean all the carpets before we moved in. It was a time saving service that worked out extremely well.

Other moving tips & tricks

• Pack a “need the first night box” and take it with you in your car. It should include the bedding for your bed, your pjs & toiletries, a roll of toilet paper, what you’ll need for your first morning breakfast (like coffee and coffee maker and mugs), and anything else important you’ll need for you and your family the first night and morning in your new home.
• Consider packing up your “living room in a box“, so you can quickly get one room entirely set up right away. Having a spot that feels like home right away can help so much.
• Be prepared that something most likely won’t “go according to plan” – even though you may have planned your hearts out! That’s just life. Roll and pivet.
• If you are downsizing dramatically (like we did for our last move), you may want to find a storage unit if you’re struggling to pare down your belongings. We were drowning in a sea of boxes while we figured out what more to get rid of!! (Sidenote, moving to a home that is bigger than your current home is much easier than downsizing.)
• Keep a binder or folder on your phone with important information and documentation– and always know where it is! It will be one less stress to you if you can quickly find the important information you need quickly.

Our Moving Stories

As I wrote this post, I realized that I have documented two (of our 10) moves here on the blog, so I started a moving category. Some of the previous articles are linked above, and here are some more:

• You’ll find things that worked well, (and things that didn’t!) on this moving tips post.
• 10 Things I learned on moving day.
• And here is a short article on the moving in day when we moved into our current townhouse. I laughed right out loud when I saw it now. Please be advised that although that picture looks so neat and tidy, the rest of the house was a nightmare… This is what it looked like in reality!! (But, sidenote…it did get better!)