A thousand and One Boxes

I am finally back and writing on the blog again- I had abandoned it a bit truth be said. As you might recall, I just got back from my first international project and I must say, I've come back rather satisfied with the work done. It has also been an exotic adventure in a country and continent I had never been to. So, I won't waste time and will start telling you all about this adventure from the very beginning.

The moving company's truck arrived early in the morning and in about one hour, the 6 men employed efficiently brought out all the boxes and pieces of furniture from the truck . Once they had done that, they formed a human chain to bring everything into the client's house.

At this point, I can now tell you about the following phases of the move:

The moment the truck arrives

• Indicate where each box goes
• Open the boxes with the moving company in order to get rid of the cardboard (very important)
• Set up the necessary furniture (tables, beds, shelves, etc)

Start organizing room by room

• Begin organizing furniture in basic order
• Place objects, clothes and other bits inside or on top of the pieces of furniture where they belong (ex: towels inside a cupboard) in order to later place them according to the needs of the client.
• Organize the contents of each piece of furniture (cupboard, chest of drawers or shelves) room by room.

From my many years experience in organizing moves I have to say that what is most crucial in terms of organization is the moment the truck arrives. It is important to be centered since you will have to tell the company employees exactly where each box should go. Moving companies have the full list of all the boxes, properly numbered and with a clear explanation of the room these boxes came from. They also have an indication of what sort of objects are inside the box. The client receives a copy of this list so that he/she can monitor the arrival of the boxes. Once all the boxes have been taken out of the truck and placed in the rooms they belong in, it is important that the moving company helps you to open all the boxes so that they can take the cardboard with them as soon as possible, in this way, your work will be significantly easier. The company should also help in setting up furniture when needed.

In the moment where the cardboard and the rest of the packaging materials disappear and each piece of furniture and objects are in their corresponding rooms that is when the actual organization work begins. At this point in time, the first thing that needs to be done is to analyze the available space well in order to assign a new “home” to each object. I usually begin by doing this with the house linen (bed sheets, towels, tablecloths...) since they usually take up a lot of space.

As you can see from the photo, I usually organize towels by colour. I don't only do this for aesthetic reasons but also because it makes it easier when you need to pick out a new set.

Detail of the tablecloths

Once I was done with the house linen, I worked with the client to unpack and organize the clothes. The good thing about this move is that when packing back home the client decided to put the clothes in synthetic bags that were easily closed with a zipper. The client had divided the clothes by category, in other words, by shirts, sweaters, trousers, etc. In this way, sorting out the clothes is done much more easily.

The shoeboxes are from IKEA

Detail of the customer's handbags.

View of the tablecloths, winter clothes, organized bags in a wardrobe also from IKEA (cheap, pretty and very practical).

Once I was done with the upstairs rooms, we began organizing the crockery and glassware.

The storage cabinet chosen for the glassware with all the objects duly arranged.

Detail of the glassware

Cabinet where the crockery was placed.

Before I say goodbye, I wanted to leave you with a piece of advice: do not stress, this doesn't help you at all. The most important thing is to remain calm and centered each day, focusing on organizing, opening boxes and placing each object in its new place. It is useless to carry out a move in a “global” way, trying to organize all rooms at the same time. First thing, do a semi-organization of each space. Then, you can perfect each room, one by one, in order to reach their most perfect state (this is what I find most satisfying).

Having said this, I have to leave now since I need to prepare a new move... in this case... mine!