Slashdot Mirror
Moving Strategies?
skotte asks: "I currently am in a position where I will be moving my whole set of belongings to a new apartment. But I refuse to just buy a bunch of boxes and start throwing things in. Surely there is a good strategy of how to tackle the act of packing. I'm thinking "Relatively" where everything related, such as CDs, go in one box, cables go in another. Or there's 'spatially', where I pack everything in one bookcase in one box. Or there's 'by Priority' in which important things i'll need right away go in one box...and on and on. There appear to indeed be LOTS of ways to go about it -- and there are big pros-and-cons to each. So what does the slashdot community think? Better yet, is there some management software to help with this sort of thing?"
...is to put everything into boxes, and get done with it. Hopefully, you will find a lot of stuff you can throw away or sell in the process.
I was thinking that maybe this guy/girl is only 16 or 17 with good job skills but little life experience or a lack of parental advice. Some people get started early and don't get all the info they need before they are on their own.
I don't think that asking a community of supposed peers an honest question is prerequisite to needing psychiatric services.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
If you currently know where things are, just start in one corner of a room, and start boxing. Label the boxes something like "LW3" for 3rd box on the west wall of the living room. The packing goes very fast - if you have help, they can pack too, and not have you complaining at the far end that you can't figure out where they put something. When you get to the far end, you have a good idea what room to put boxes in. Again, any fool can help move the boxes in. And if you are trying to find something that is still boxed up, just think about where it was before you boxed up.
Damn, that Spider Robinson is a genius.
- dave f.
depends on if he's storing the stuff or if he's hiring movers. if either, i wouldn't write the contents on the box, too easy for a thief to steal from..."oh, this one has his special edition DVD's, wonder how much i could sell those for. i think these'll 'fall off the truck'."
Free Webmail
An additional consideration when packing a vehicle is destination. When you pack your vehicle to move things, you should be packing in reverse order of unload depth -- i.e., look at where you are moving into, and arrange your load so that the first things you take out of the vehicle go the furthest into your new place, filling back toward the entry as you go. This way, you don't wind up having to climb over furniture and boxes in the living room while you're trying to schlep a box spring back into the bedroom.
It also pays to sit down with a graphics editor, CAD program, or pieces of paper cut to scale and lay out the floorplan and all your furniture, then decide where you want all your furniture to go in the new place before you move, if possible. It's much easier to get furniture moved in if you can unload it into at least an approximation of its final position.