One of my least favorite things about moving and packing, is having to write on all the boxes because I get so tired of writing the same thing over and over again. If you’ve ever moved you know what I mean! For this move I decided I would print out bright colored labels to identify each of the boxes, which would make it easy for my friends to know where the boxes go, and it would save me from having to write on all the boxes! I bought these shipping labels from Office Depot and I love them because they are super bright and nice and big (2″x4″).
After purchasing the labels I used Microsoft Word to print out what I wanted all the labels to say. I have a lot of fragile stuff so I used all the bright pink sheets to make the “FRAGILE” labels. The other colors I divided between bedrooms, bathrooms, the kitchen, decor, office, playroom, etc.
Looking at this picture makes my OCD side get all excited! What crazy organized person wouldn’t love to have these awesome, bright labels for moving and packing!?
After printing the labels I put them on all my boxes and furniture. It’s important to label the furniture too so it’s easy for your friends, or movers, to know right where everything goes.
I also printed these bright colored pieces of paper to hang up at the new house, to identify the rooms for the movers.
With the boxes labeled and the rooms labeled my friends and family will know right where to put everything, and then I won’t be searching for misplaced boxes later on!
One of my other least favorite things about moving is having to call around to change our address and all our utilities over to the new house. Luckily, this time, I was able to switch a lot of them online, but I still spent a good amount of time on the phone too. While I was waiting on the phone I created this handy dandy checklist to share with you!
Click HERE to get the printable version.
If you have any moving tips I would love to hear them! Leave me a comment and share your best moving and packing tips. To see my other moving related posts click on the links below:
How to Make Packing Stress-Free
Squee! We are moving in less than a month and I love these! Especially the change of address checklist. Thank you for sharing!
You’re welcome! Good luck with your move!!! 🙂
Since we always move with littles I make a prep room. Either an office or combine them in room. That way all the stacked boxes are not a danger to them. It has helped a lot on cutting down the repacking of the boxes a toddler finds interesting.
That’s a GREAT idea!!!
These are awesome tips and printables for moving!! I pinned it for when we get ready to move. It will make my life alot easier!! Thanks so much!!
I love the printables and will definately share. This will make it more fun to move, right? At least, I hope. Thanks for sharing.
One thing we did with our last two moves, instead of just labeling the boxes with what rooms they went in, we made a master list of all the boxes we packed in a notebook and numbered the boxes as we went, corresponding to their number in the notebook with a basic list of what was inside. Not as helpful in identifying where each box goes quickly, but some of our things went in storage and weren’t unpacked right away. This way, we could look through the notebook for a specific item without having to open a ton of wrong boxes.
Great idea! Did the sticky labels come off of the furniture OK?
I had to use a razor blade, but it wasn’t bad. 🙂
if you heat it up a little with a hair dryer they peel off easier from the heat 🙂
Any ideas on packing up for my son’s dorm room?
Here’s one of two posts I have about dorm rooms: https://askannamoseley.com/2011/08/reader-question-getting-organized-in-the-dorms/.
If you need packing tips here are a bunch of posts we have on the blog: https://askannamoseley.com/tag/moving/
Hi Anna! I am love with this idea and have been trying to implement it. However I’ve only been able to find the laser labels, which I’m now seeing is what you used. However I need ink jet but I can’t find them. Did you use your labels in a laser printer? I’m wondering what ink jet users can do… Thank you 🙂
I have an ink jet printer. I think any printer will work fine. 🙂
Thank you! The employee at Staples didn’t recommend it, so I hesitated. Thanks for the update!
Yeah, they don’t know what they are talking about. 🙂 It worked great for me!
We did something similar but with duct tape! The different colors of duct tape corresponded to each room. Just hung the matching color in the door frame! 🙂
Aspen, that’s exactly the compromise I”ve settled on, since we don’t have a printer. But I haven’t found a good soft pastel pink yet, only really fluorescent pink.
I am so envious of your great labels! We are about to move, but we don’t have a printer, so I am stuck handwriting everything and it is going to make me crazy!
It has been 27 years since we last moved but, in our experience, it is much easier if the labels are placed on both sides (or all sides) of the boxes, not the top. In that way, you are not lifting each box in a pile to see where it should go.