Moving an entire household is stressful, to say the least. But properly labeled boxes can help you avoid moving-day chaos and make it easier for you, your professional movers, or your extremely generous friends to identify where to put your things in your new place.
Since boxes look practically identical once they’re on the moving truck, they have to be labeled. Otherwise, you’ll end up with bathroom stuff in your kitchen (and vice versa), and waste time re-relocating your belongings from room to room. To save yourself the trouble of writing on each and every box, though, and to quickly and efficiently designate which box goes where, consider this handy moving box labeling hack.
The key is to develop a color-coding system. To get it done, you’ll need several rolls of masking tape in different colors — specifically, a different color for each room. You’ll also need a flattened cardboard box or a large piece of paper.
1. Assign each room at your new residence a different color of masking tape. Place a strip of the assigned tape on the wall just outside the room (or inside if that makes more sense for an open-concept space like a living room or kitchen).
2. Create a cheat sheet to keep track of all the colors/rooms and place it in a central location or outside the main entrance. This can be done on a flattened moving box.
3. As you pack up the goods for a particular room, place strips of the corresponding tape on the top and all four sides of the box so it’s immediately clear where it belongs.
4. If your new home has more than one level, you can put multiple tape colors at each end of the staircase to signal which rooms are located upstairs or downstairs.
This time-saving hack will make unpacking a whole lot easier — and your movers are guaranteed to be impressed.
