Five ways to make packing not so SCARY

Where to start? Boxes? Packing materials? What if I pack it wrong and something breaks? What goes in which boxes? Yikes!

Packing can be a scary thing but as one of the most important components of the move, it is a critical part of a smooth move to your new place.

The Stronger crew was talking it over this weekend and came up with these five important tips for people getting ready to pack for a local move:

1. Make clean-out a priority and donate unwanted items to charity. This way you don't have to pay more to move your stuff than it would cost to replace them. Think canned goods for example or books.

2. Pack boxes full and seal them so they can be stacked. In any move using hired professionals, time is money. The more time spent carrying out unsealed boxes one-by-one because they can't be stacked, the more money the move will cost you. You may have a lot of boxes, but stacking them three or four per dolly and wheeling them out goes very quickly. Movers can only do that if they are properly packed and sealed.

3. As the stuff gets heavier, the box should get smaller. Book boxes, for example, are small because the contents are heavy. Large boxes full of books are practically un-lift-able, even for the pros.

4. Save lots of work, use wardrobe boxes. Stronger Moving rents large boxes with metal rods in them called wardrobe boxes for $5 a piece (or you can buy them for $15 each). You can squeeze together about 2 linear feet of hanging clothes to save the trouble of un-hanging and re-hanging. As a bonus, the space in the bottom of these boxes is great of non-breakable items like pillows or shoes.

5. Write the room name and contents on the SIDES of the boxes, not just the tops. This eliminates the need for movers to stop and ask "where do you want this?" If they can see right on the side of their stack of boxes which room they need to take them to, the job goes faster, saving you money.

Watch this short video on packing the items in your kitchen. It shows you how to pack those breakable items so they won't break and it explains the right way to open a box before packing it (most people get it wrong!).