When you are moving home, one of the most overlooked processes is the packing part of the move. You will likely leave it to as late as possible to start, as it is so incredibly boring that it will rarely seem worth the effort to start early! This is precisely the reason that you should start early however, as the effort will be reduced tenfold if you are to get ahead in your planning, preparation and packing, the three P’s! Packing is essential, especially when moving to Marseille, as your things will take much more of a beating when they are being shipped on a ferry or on a train, and going through various pairs of hands whilst being loaded and unloaded.
To begin with, you should get your planning and preparation started as early as possible, you should give yourself a month or so to plan such a large move, as otherwise you may start planning only to realize that you have not given your self enough time to get everything done! It is much better that you have too much time, and can take things really easily than being rushed and panicked for the whole duration of the move! Start by putting together a list of everything that you need to get done, including the packing of each room, and how long you think each task is going to take, as well as the person in the family that will be performing it. Once you have sorted this, there will be the task of laying everything out on to a time table which will map out the weeks leading up to the move. On this time table you can put in hourly slots across the waking hours of each day, into which you can fill out different people performing various things that need doing. This plan should give you a great perspective as to the size and effort that the move will entail, allowing you to either relax slightly and get on with things, or give you a shock and jump start you in to action, depending on how prepared you are!
One of the main things on this time table should be the packing process. You will need to divide your time between the rooms, and make sure that you do not put anyone’s belongings out of action whist they are still needed, or everything will become difficult and confused. You will likely have to make sacrifices however, if you have particularly large amounts of a certain thing, like make up, shoes or children’s toys, then it may be a case of reducing these items to a couple of essentials for the weeks before the move, and packing the rest of the collection up, as difficult it may be! You will almost definitely want to keep essentials like cooking implements until the day before you move, at which point you will likely be eating a few takeaways!
Packing your items relies on clever wrapping. Do not be tempted to use loads and loads of bubble wrap, as there is little that two layers of bubble wrap will protect against that a single one will not. Over wrapping will waste space in your boxes, and ultimately drive the price of the move up as you have to buy extra materials and ship an extra box. Of course, you should be aware that shipping these boxes will put them under more stress than a normal move in a van. For this reason you should certainly avoid under wrapping, as delicate items will almost certainly break!
