Raise your hand if you’ve ever moved and, more than 6 months later, found yourself with boxes in the house that still haven’t been unpacked (or worse, found their way to a storage unit where they’re still not unpacked).
I recently had the opportunity to help out a client who had moved and, along with all of the items from his current home, came 30+ boxes from his storage unit. These boxes had been in storage for years but he was finally ready to give up the storage unit and find a permanent home for everything.
It was no small task, but we picked away at it bit by bit. The most important things to remember when tackling a project of this size are:
#1. Sort, sort, sort! You can’t do anything until you know what you have so you have to open every box, take it all out and sort all like items together. From there, the real sorting can begin. As a good friend told me, remember, “Mess before success.”. It’s likely going to look worse before it looks better but that’s ok. It’s the progress that’s important.
#2. If you see anything along the way that you know you don’t need, remove it immediately. Don’t wait to sort through everything. If you know you don’t want it, get rid of it. The sooner the piles are smaller, the better you’ll feel.
#3. Have patience. Sorting through all of these boxes and finding a proper home for everything took an entire week, and that doesn’t include the diligent homework my client did once I had left to do additional purging. The task can feel really daunting, especially if you don’t see progress right away, but you will get there.
Here’s a Before & After of the apartment and, as you can see, the boxes are gone, but, even better, other than a small storage unit, everything fit into the new apartment with ease.
Nothing is shoved in closets for another day, there are no unknown boxes hiding under the bed – Everything is organized, sorted and put in a place for them to either use or enjoy.
We have also set up a maintenance package so we can meet up every couple of months to ensure the files get filed and the clutter gets sorted. I’m not only really proud of the final product, but the work we did to get here.
