One of the reasons so many people pay somebody else to do their packing for them when they move is because it takes so much brain power to figure out what order to pack things in. It isn't until you plop that first cardboard box on the table and look around the room that you realize that everything you own has a distinctive hierarchy. What to pack first?



The problem is one of foresight. In a sizable family household, you'll be quite inconvenienced by having all of your possessions in identical cartons at the other end. You'll be hungry and thirsty, and so want the kitchen stuff accessible at some point. A change of clothes is nice to have after you've become all sweaty from heaving furniture off the truck. You don't want to flop on the couch at 10PM only to realize that your clothes, towels, and shampoo are all in separate boxes and you have to be at work at 8AM tomorrow. And now that the fishbowl has made the trip and is on the mantle - where's the fish food? And so on.

The books and computer are a no-brainer, of course. Pack them first. If you have time to read or play solitaire, you're done moving. Also, putting that computer back together and teaching it to play nice with whatever Internet connection you'll have at your new abode will be the kind of thing you want an afternoon devoted to. You may have to argue with it, and it's best to do so while the kids are busy putting their toys away and the wife is sorting her clothes, so they aren't all standing around you going "Is that blue screen the Internet?"

Knick-knacks, dust-catchers, and decorative items like paintings are a good candidate for early crating, seeing as how decorative arrangements will be done at leisure after the necessities of life are attended to. The trouble with anything that hangs on a wall is that you don't think about it until the room is otherwise empty. You haul out the last piece of furniture, pause to survey the room, and then gasp as you realize that you almost forgot the mirror...

Do you put something in the front of the moving van for motivation? I know I do. A bottle of one's favorite potent potable lurking behind all that tangled maze of furniture always provides inspiration to pull it all out. Scotch works well, and will be therapeutic while you are wrestling the shelving through a door and around a corner that's too small to move shelving through.

Seasonal decorations have an easy answer: throw them away! I've never seen the string of Christmas lights or box of ornaments that could survive moving anyway. In fact, the lights burn out and the ornaments shatter just from sitting undisturbed in the attic for 360 days. I don't know what could possibly be happening to them, other than "dust stress" or perhaps a particularly reckless spider runs into them.

Hey, don't forget the icebox! No, of course, you're taking that, but what are you going to do with everything inside of it? Block party for the neighbors? It's times like these that you realize just how small an ice chest really is, if you even have one. Why, exactly, was it a good idea to stock up on pork chops last weekend?

You'd think the CD collection and stereo follow the same rule as the books and computer, and yet as soon as you have them packed you realize that loud music is just what you need in the background while you pack. Without the music, the activities of packing and carrying turn into a bleak, solemn toil, as if you were preparing to flee the mainland in anticipation of an Apocalypse.

Nevertheless, most of the furniture has to go in the truck first. That's because you'll have to stack the boxes on top of the furniture in the truck, and then at the other end, you'll be unloading boxes and wondering what to do with them all until you get the furniture off. The furniture part is the one time when you will be reminded of how impractical your purchasing choices are. A sofa-bed seems like a cute idea until you have to move it. If you have one of these half-seating-half-tank monstrosities, you know that the time to load and unload them is when you absolutely have to and not a minute sooner.

But at last, you'll be at the end of it all, all snug in your new domestic nest. Almost nobody gets it all unpacked in one day. Your days will be interrupted by awkward situations such as stepping out of the shower and discovering that nobody's found the towels yet, thrashing though crates in a blind panic to find that important notebook with the number to the insurance company in it, and pretending you lost the kid's Tickle-Me Elmo so you can enjoy a few more blissful days of not having to listen to it.

But eventually, the boxes do go away. And you will most likely be marking their disappearance with the groan, "Never again!" Right - until next time.