Packing up and moving your apartment home office can really turn your world upside down — especially if you work from home. These apartment office packing tips will show you how to organize and stash important home office items properly so you can maintain access to them throughout your move.
Plan ahead
When you’re starting to pack, a good strategy is to plan ahead when it comes to working in your office — especially if you run a business out of it. While you’re creating a plan for how to pack your apartment, don’t forget the important tasks you’ll need to take care of in your home office between now and moving day.
If you use your home office desk for a business, try to anticipate the projects you have coming down the pipeline. If you use your office to take care of family finances, think about when each of your bills is due. Plan to finish any bill-paying or projects well in advance of the week of your move. This way you can take care of all important apartment office activities before you have to stash all of your functional office supplies and files out of reach in boxes.
Spread the word
No matter how you use your home office desk, it’s important to keep everyone — both clients and personal contacts — informed of your move. You may receive important correspondence like bills, checks, and statements through paper mail at your apartment, and you’ll need to make sure that those important home office documents make their way to your new place once your address changes.
Keep customers and personal contacts informed by contacting them with your new address and the effective date of your move. You should also complete a change of address form online with the United States Postal Service.
Trim the fat
Regular decluttering is the key to successful home office organization, and this space-clearing technique is even more important when you’re moving. You should never pack and transport any item you don’t need, so you’ll want to declutter all of the following:
•Books and magazines. Since these items are heavy, donate any books you haven’t read or referred to in the past six months.
•Furniture. Give away, recycle, or donate any apartment office furniture that you do not use or that will not fit in your new place.
•Papers. Sort through paper files and discard documents you no longer need. Protect yourself from identity theft by using a shredder to discard old documents. (You can use the shreddings to pack boxes!)
Decluttering these areas of your home office before you pack will make your move much more efficient.
Set aside important documents
When you’re purging your office desk of unnecessary paperwork, you’ll likely come across many important documents like passports, birth certificates, insurance papers, tax forms, and others. Pack these important items separately from other apartment office books and supplies. Keep them in a specially-labeled accordion file or banker’s box (a cardboard box designed for transporting paper files) and transport this file yourself on moving day.
Back up electronic files
Your computer should survive the move safely as long as you pack the electronics properly, but it’s still a good idea to safeguard important electronic home office files by backing up your computer. Word processing documents, e-mails, programs, and music files should all be backed up. Many of these files represent a big financial investment on your part and some of them contain sensitive personal information, so it’s best to back them up using CD-ROMs or an external hard drive, just in case. Move these back-up files along with your other important documents, preferably in your car.
A home office is more or less the epicenter of your financial life, so it’s important to keep everything organized during a move to ensure that all of your most important documents and office supplies make the trip safely. By following these tips, your home office should be much easier to unpack and set up when you reach your new apartment.
