I've mentioned before that my husband is in the military, right? That means packers come and pack everything up and then move it across the country for us. It's an amazing perk, I'm not going to lie. All we have to do is unpack it and settle in. Oh, and transport two cars, two kids, a uhaul trailer, a cat and various items that move with us no matter what clear across the country. About a months worth of work. I need an Angry Orchard just thinking about it.
On to my part in the beginning stage of our moving journey!
I have to pack enough for for me and the kids to last a couple of weeks before we get our stuff again. Since I am a little obsessed much with having things organized into neat litttle piles I thought I would share a bit how I pack for us. P.S. Husband packs himself in the last 20 minutes before the movers come. It takes me three days to pack us. Men!
1) Depending on where we are going and the length of time I use either two large, hard sided suitcases or two large LL Bean duffel bags. Since this is a longer trip I used the duffel bags as I can fit more in. The kids are in the larger one and I get the smaller one (go figure! How times have changed...)
2) Several days before all hell breaks loose the movers come, I get all the clothes we will take and separate them into piles on my bedroom floor so I know we have enough complete outfits for at least 7 days (doing laundry somehow in the middle.) I also do piles for shoes, pajamas, swim gear and colder weather items. It sort of looks like a garage sale in our room since I spread it all out real good. What can I say, I'm visual?
3) I like to use those cloth grocery bags to seperate the clothes in the different bags and keep items from getting jumbled up and wrinkled. I wash them, then put all of Molly's outfits in one, Brady's in another, shoes in another, sleepwear, undies, etc. I try to put them into bags by category so I can find what I'm looking for more easily on the road.
I do the same for all of my clothes as well. I also bring all my lingerie/ contents of my underwear drawer with me as it seems creepy to have movers pack it. Yikes.
4) After everything is in the cloth bags I fit them in the duffel bags and then use the handles to tie the tops so everything is really secure. They fit into the duffels really neatly and stay organized and neat. I then stuff their nighttime blankets, lovies, etc around the edges of the bags and I'm done.
5) Our other belonging that don't make it in the moving van with our household goods get packed into laundry baskets so they are easy to pick up and move around. We are renting a small uhaul to tow behind the car (fun, fun!) I let the kids each pack one of the baskets with the toys they want to bring with them and I also pack my jewelry boxes, our big bin that I store all of our keepsakes as well as my husbands work stuff he brings along.
6) Lastly, I put our toiletries into large freezer bags and different travel cases and fit it all into my carry on hard backed luggage. I have a lot of full size bottles and stuff because this is an actual move and not just vacation, so I sort those by category in the zip locks. I like to have all this stuff in one bag/suitcase so it is easily accessible and in one place.
Thats it! I won't get into all the other super fun moving stuff, like scrubbing baseboards, wearing the same gross outfit three days in a row and finding dust bunnies the size of small rodents underneath our tv cabinet, okay. It's not pretty.
