Despite all of
hassle moving represents, when anxiety is gone and dust has cleared, most of us have to admit that it's a liberating experience. It forces us to rid ourselves of clutter accumulated in house we're leaving. Whether of not you buy new furniture for your new residence, motions of packing up and heading for different surroundings is a positive experience for most movers. It's an opportunity to start over.Before you move, it's a good idea to take inventory of your belongings and consider what place they'll have -- if any -- in your new home. After all, when you moved into your current home, your family's needs were different. Since then, its occupants have become older, hobbies have been abandoned, tastes have changed, and now, suddenly, items you once thought you'd die without don't seem that wonderful anymore.
* Taking stock of your furniture is a good place to start; after all, if you decide to get rid of a piece or two, you can save yourself considerable expense of moving them. In addition to your furniture, take a good look at your lamps, rugs, pillows, and other accessories -- particularly ones you've stored away for months -- and decide whether they really reflect your tastes anymore. Some of them may serve little purpose other than to clutter your closets and collect dust. Rid yourself of them, while reminding yourself that everything you pack means more boxes, more packaging and labor costs, and more to unpack later.
* An effective strategy is to draw on paper floor plan of your new home. Sketch in designated spots for your furniture, making sure you've noted where such obstacles as fireplaces, windows, built-in shelves or desks, etc., are located. Remember where your electric outlets, telephone jacks, and television hookups are located, and make sure you've considered direction in which your doors open. If you're looking for a more exact plan, with square footage taken into account, take a note from Better Homes and Gardens Online, which suggests using graph paper to draw your rooms to scale. Each square translates to one foot of available space.
Here's where your creativity takes over: After measuring size and shape of each major piece of your furniture, draw them on graph paper using same one-square-per-foot scale as you did for rooms in your new home. Then cut shapes and arrange your miniature furniture within your various room floor plans. Once you've made a decision about what suits you and where, attach shapes onto page.
While this process requires a little patience and a little more creativity, planning ahead enables you to avoid either moving heavy furniture yourself, long after movers have left; or having your movers pause upon entry into a room, shouldering a heavy load as you decide where that 300-pound dresser should be placed. (Of course, you'd be lucky to find such a tolerant mover.) You've got a plan of attack that makes your life and your movers' lives easier. You can point them in a direction and move on to next item. The bottom line is that you're paying by hour, and a little sketching and cutting now will save you labor costs later. Take trouble to draw only your major pieces of furniture; your smaller items and accessories can be placed anywhere for now, until you have time to consider perfect spots for them.
This strategy also allows you to experiment with various arrangements that you may have considered in past, but abandoned because it seemed like too much effort to pursue. And trying out new configurations is a consolation for not being able to purchase new furniture. Even if you've resigned yourself to a sofa that doesn't thrill you anymore, arranging your furniture in a different manner may provide you with a completely new outlook on belongings that once seemed tired. That variety, combined with a new place of residence, is bound to inspire you. And don't restrict your furnishings to rooms in which you've traditionally placed them. For example, chest of drawers sitting in your bedroom might look even better in your new living room. This move is your big chance to experiment -- and you don't even have to move furniture yourself.
