If you need to move out of your student accommodation for the Easter break then it can be a stressful time. With the focus on getting essays handed in (or dissertations completed) and the prospect of exams looming having to move out makes everything more difficult. Below are our tips to help.
Tip 1 – Start early
We don’t mean get out of bed at 9am rather than 10 on the day of the move. We mean work out what you need to store and get a quote well in advance of the day you move. Once you’ve picked a company (and we hope it’s Chaffinch!) then it’s time to start thinking about things you don’t need and can pack straightaway. The best example is text books that you won’t need for the coming term – having a box available to store things that you won’t need can make the ‘big pack’ much less daunting.
Tip 2 – Use good quality packing supplies
Having plates clattering about and boxes with the bottom about to fall out is not a good idea. The money you might save by using old boxes and not investing in bubble wrap or other protective packaging is likely to be undone when you go to move the box and everything falls out or smashes into each other. At Chaffinch we offer packaging when you order that will be delivered to your door – we also like to argue that our boxes are some of the biggest around so you can get more in! Taking advantage of this means you don’t have to worry about heading down to the university post office and discovering they’ve sold out of tape or bubble wrap.
Tip 3 – Label your boxes
Make sure you label each box to show what it contains. This means when you come back after the Easter break the unpacking process is less stressful – you know where everything is and if you’ve got good friends it makes it much easier for them to help you unpack too! To make life even easier you could label all four sides of the box and the top too – that way you haven’t got to spin it around to find out what’s in it. It also means that you can stack boxes and can see exactly what’s in them (without having to worry about making the labels face outwards).
Tip 4 – Keep an inventory
Just because you’ve labelled that box ‘kitchen things’ doesn’t mean you know exactly what’s in it – it saves opening every kitchen related box looking for the cheese grater only to realise you lent it to a friend 3 weeks before the break and never got it back! One simple way to keep an inventory as you pack is to take photos of the contents of the box before you put them in – perhaps use a note taking app like Evernote to keep track of them.
Tip 5 – Pack heavy at the bottom, light at the top
Try not to pack all of your heavy items in one box, it’s much easier for you to carry and unpack if you spread the weight across a number of boxes. Our general tip is if it’s too heavy for you to lift it will be too heavy for us to store. However you pack the one thing you don’t want to do is pack a lot of light things and then stick a kettlebell on top, not only is there the risk that it will break whatever you’ve put it on top of but you also make the box unbalanced making it much harder to carry.
Tip 6 – Relax
Well, you can relax if you’ve chosen Chaffinch as your move and storage option – we’ll turn up on the day you specified ready to take your well packed and well labelled boxes to our secure storage. And then we’ll deliver them back on the day you requested, ready for you to reap the reward of all that labelling and inventory taking and unpack quickly and easily!
