From chaos to control—start packing with the hardest rooms first

-Packing and moving is crazy-making, even in the best of circumstances. Experts recommend planning, sorting, and packing in an orderly method, room by room. This is helpful advice, but even methodically moving through rooms isn’t as stress-free as we hope. Especially after spending three days into sorting and packing, then opening the kitchen cabinets to a visual assault of pots, pans, dishes, food, glasses, silverware, utensils, and odds and ends that have been collected over the years that should have been given away years ago. The Reno movers team from Owens Brothers Transfer has a strategy.

Did you know that the kitchen and garage are the two most difficult spaces to pack?

The garage is full of stored items, odd-shaped heavy items, tools, the lawnmower, lawn care chemicals, even pesticides, and insecticides. Some items stored in the garage can only be moved with special handling, such as the lawn mower that must have an empty and dry gas tank.

The kitchen contains forgotten items stuffed in the back of cabinets or on the highest shelves. It’s also the room with the most small items like utensils, tableware, half-full spice jars, empty glass jars saved for future use, mismatched food storage containers, pots, pans, skillets, and so on. Additionally, there’s at least one cabinet containing cleaning chemicals.

Planning for sorting, packing, and moving is good advice, and the Reno movers recommend taking the strategic approach of tackling the most difficult spaces first. Depending on the household, those spaces may be the garage and kitchen, or perhaps the home office, a storage shed, or some other room.

The important thing is to determine which rooms are going to be the most complex to sort through and pack.  Going through possessions and deciding what to keep is what makes packing time-consuming. Tackling the rooms requiring the most work first eliminates that sinking feeling that happens when an open door reveals stacks of surprises!

Helpful considerations include:

• Materials considered hazardous, such as paint, lawn care products, insecticides, herbicides, and food, even dry food like beans and rice, cannot be kept in a storage unit. Some hazardous materials can’t even be transported by moving companies.
• Store food items that are needed for meals in a separate section of the cabinet and donate the rest to a food bank.
• Clean the refrigerator and freezer and only keep what is needed for meals. Give the rest away.
• If the refrigerator, freezer, washer, and dryer are also moving, clean them and make sure they are dry.
• In the garage, pack only what is going to be moved. Hold a garage sale for the rest, and donate or dispose of what is left over from the sale.
• In the kitchen, pack fragile items first, in sturdy boxes marked as fragile.
• Have boxes prepared for items to be donated or thrown out, and clear those boxes away periodically.

The Reno movers say that getting the most difficult packing done first is encouraging.

Disposing of hazardous materials, cleaning and drying appliances, wrapping, cushioning, and packing fragile items, and packing heavy items, are all more time-consuming than packing clothes and linens. Make the move as easy on yourself as possible.

Owens Brothers Transfer is celebrating 40+ years of helping families and businesses relocate to and from the greater Tahoe area. In that time, they have completed more than 15,000 moves. The company specializes in moving homes, offices, hotels, resort properties and large firms in the Lake Tahoe area. There are never hidden fees or unexplained charges. Clients receive a written estimate and get the same team of movers at both ends of the move.