What tips for packing and moving would you give to others?

My biggest ones are;

1) plan ahead and start early. We don't move for another 43 days (yes I'm keeping count lol) and we are already packing and organizing.

2) don't move anything you don't need or love. We are going through everything we own and donating, throwing away anything we don't need or love. We have gone from 20 boxes of "stuff" to just a few boxes of important items.

Hire movers!!!  Best money I ever spent.  All those times I moved myself thinking I was saving myself the money...but it's amazing how much more smoothly and quickly it goes when you hire movers.  SO worth the money!

Ditto Beattie!

The time you spend packing and moving it also time you could make some money to hire a mover. . .

They come in, pack everything up, and drop it in the appropriate room of the new house.   The last time I made a big move by myself I drove everything carload by carload 60 miles each way: it took several days and this was when gas prices were over $3.00/gallon.

In retrospect, I should have just hired a van to come pack and move everything all at once, it would have been cheaper AND I would have been able to work sooner.  <--live and learn.

a.  Ditto on the plan ahead and start early!

b.  We also toss LOTS of stuff - all of it goes to the ARC and all of it is a write off :)

ditto on the throw out whatever you don't need so you have to move less...

I am a big fan of labelling EVERYTHING so you don't end up opening a bunch of boxes of christmas decorations in July.

Clearly label boxes you need to open and unpack immediately--like work clothes, dishes, shower stuff to clean up your sweaty moving self, whatever you need to live right away! Those boxes are labeled with a red marker. That way these boxes don't get burried under those that you don't need in the few days after you move!

Hmm, labels everything (Kitchen fragile), (office, books) donate what you dont need  for sure.  I agree with the ladies sometimes just hiring someone (if possible) is so much easier.  

Clearly Label & Box up things that go in specific rooms together. Especially if you Hire movers.... then the boxes go Right into the new house & back into the rooms they belong: Kitchen, Living room, bathroom, etc.

PACK THE TOILET PAPER ON TOP! :)

ditto beatie - definitely hire movers. Its so cheap for in town moves and by the time you pay for renting a uhaul and all of that its sooooo worth it. 

When we moved from Philadelphia to LA we had movers who packed everything too - that was amazing. It took them a couple of hours to do what would have taken me a week or more to do!