Tips for an Organized Move

Similar to baseball and apple pie, moving is a popular American pastime. Every year, one in five American families makes a move --- and this year, it'll be your family on the road. So how do you prepare for moving with a calm and efficient demeanor? Follow out expert tips for moving to Denver and you'll be cruising to Colorado in no time.

Have a dedicated place for your moving, with bubble wrap, sharpies, labelers, packing tape, and other packing tools. Get a notebook to keep everything organized, too. Get one with big pages, one for each day, and throw in some business card holders, zipper pouches and receipt envelopes. How will you use it? Let me count the ways. During the crazy pre-move house-hunting days, you'll track phone calls, make notes on houses you've toured, and gather phone numbers for the gazillion new close friends you'll make --- all those realtors and rental agents and mortgage people and moving-van guys and handymen you'll come to know and loathe quite intimately in the coming weeks. Tuck all business cards into their own little slots for easy reference. Cram snippets of flooring and wallpaper, paint swatches and drapery goods into a see-through zipper pouch for at-the-store decorating reference. Dedicate one receipt envelope for those fix-up-the-old-place receipts. Another receipt envelope holds receipts generated by house-hunting trips and travel to your new home. Stuff everything in there, and you'll thank yourself at tax time!

Pack your daily essentials last. This might seem like a no-brainer, but it is easy to get swept up in moving and pack your everyday items in with your other belongings, leaving you helpless until you can locate it all again! Create an essentials box/suitcase and include toiletries, a few changes of clothes, a shower curtain, toilet paper, chargers for your electronics and a few days' worth of pet food.

Organize like crazy. Labeling everything will be a breath of fresh air when it comes time to unpack. Open any word processor. Do what you have to do to tell it to make labels --- they're pretty easy to instruct these days. You will go to the office supply store. You will purchase a large box of the cheapest computer labels available for your computer printer. Then make several hundred --- yes, I said, several hundred --- labels for your boxes, a hundred or so for each room or area in your house:

Kitchen

Living room

Family room

Master bedroom

Girl bedroom

Boy bedroom

Bathroom

Storage