Lined Paper for a Simple Moving Box Inventory

I’ve moved enough times to know the boxes aren’t the hard part. Remembering what went into box 14 is. A single sheet of lined paper taped to the wall by the front door has saved me more grief than any moving app I’ve tried.

Here is my setup. I keep one master sheet per room, with the room name written across the top. Every box gets a number, sequential across the whole house, so box 37 exists exactly once and never in two rooms at the same time. On each line I write the number, a short contents note, and two narrow columns at the right margin: load and unload.

The contents note stays vague on purpose. “Books, shelf brackets, picture hooks” is plenty. I don’t list every item, because I’d quit doing it by the third box and then the whole sheet becomes a lie.

Load and unload is the part people skip. When a box goes onto the truck, I mark L and note roughly where it sat — front, middle, back. When it comes off, I mark U. Any box without a U gets found before the truck pulls away. Last move, box 22 (kitchen: oil, vinegar, the knife roll) sat in a back corner and would have ridden to the new place and back if I hadn’t been checking the list.

For the sheets themselves, I don’t need anything fancy — plain ruled stock with a margin does the job. I print a few dozen pages of printable lined paper in A4 or Letter to fit my clipboard, since the rulings on ordinary notebook pages never line up with the box labels I write.

A few things that help:

• Number boxes with a fat marker on two sides and the top. One side always ends up facing the wall.
• Write the room on the box itself too. The sheet is for me; the box is for whoever is carrying it.
• Keep the master sheets in a folder in the car, not in a box. You want them at both ends of the move.

When the move is done, that folder becomes the unpacking list, room by room.

— Emily Parker