Packing tips needed please!

[NewYearNewJobNewHome]

Well the 'NewHome' part of my username has came true - DH and I have bought our first house hopefully moving in about 6-8 weeks (house needs working doing before we move in!)

Please hit me with your best tips for:

1. What I can be doing in the old house now.
2. The most efficient ways to pack.

Thanks

1. If you have a spare room or ideally, a room downstairs you don’t use much, start assembling packed boxes there. Try to have a ruthless clear out as you go - you don’t want to be packing/unpacking stuff you don’t need.

1. I’d recommend getting hold of a set of proper moving cardboard boxes. You can either buy them (storage places sell good ones) or ask on freecycle.

You want to label each box in big permanent marker with the room it should go to in the new house and a brief note of the contents. Write the label on the top of the box and on at least two sides (so that once they’re stacked you can still see a label).

I used a different colour marker to identify boxes that I would need immediately (to avoid them ending up at the bottom of the pile).

@INeedNewShoes that's really helpful, thanks unfortunately don't have a room we don't use, but I suppose I could start packing children's things up and stack them in the corner!

A de-clutter is a good idea, we had one before Christmas but I may start going through every drawer/cupboard again and be even more ruthless!

Use a packing service if you can. As a proportion of the overall cost of removals it's pretty small.