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?"

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[Gerry Gleason]

How much stuff could you have? Throw some out, maybe do a little sorting while you are weeding out. If you aspire to be like Martha Stewart, then organize stuff into storage bins that are well organized and labeled.

When the move date looms and you haven't done any of the above yet, make sure you have lots of extra boxes (plastic bags for clothes and that wrapping film are really useful) and just start packing and throwing. Some organization is good, and make sure you are careful about the things you really need to use in the near future (one theory is everything else should be pitched). Except for those small number of important boxes, your not going to unpack the rest for a year or more anyway.

We've been in our house (first one) for almost a year and a half, and I'm almost done with moving box archeology (it can be fun sometimes). Except for the dozen or so boxes recently moved from the garage to the basement to make room to store a sister's pop-up trailer. Then there's the stuff from another sister who's off at graduate school, and the other sister currently semi long term consulting out of town who is going to drop her appartment here and put more boxes in the basement. Theoretically, owning a house is a longer term proposition than renting, so I don't mind accumulating stuff, but I try to keep a little control over it. When I was younger I moved between the East Coast and Chicago several times, mostly in very overpacked cars. That hasn't been possible for a long time now, and the last move we actually hired professionals for the heavy lifting.

You'll have to decide what is and isn't important to you, and how often you expect to move, etc. I recomend getting some perspective by watching George Carlin's rant on 'stuff' a few times.