[MrsHutch]

Ugh I just did this in May, and it is SO overwhelming! Every day (or rather every moment) I would have to remind myself that you eat an elephant one bite at a time, and encourage myself that each box packed was one bite of a huge elephant! I learned that packing to move is 90% walking in circles and sighing loudly.

We had a yard sale a few weeks before the move, and as I was packing things, I was also making a yard sale pile. We got rid of SO MUCH STUFF. It was great.

I think you have a good idea of some starting places. At every step, I just looked around the house for non-essentials that could go. Will we need this between now and the move? No? Pack it up. About a week before, I even packed up all of our clothes except for about 3 outfits, 2 pajamas, and a few pairs of underwear per person. It isn't very hippie of me, but we switched to all paper and plastic utensils for the last few days, too, so I could pack up all of the plates and such.

For boxes, I went to local businesses like Dollar General and Kroger and got them all free. There is an ideal medium size that you want to shoot for for most things, as several of my bigger boxes became too heavy and difficult to carry. Heavy duty boxes like laundry detergent or bananas come in are great for heavy, fragile things like dishes.

Another tip that has helped SO MUCH with unpacking is to write on the box every single item that is in the box, along with the room it goes in. So instead of just writing KITCHEN on 15 boxes, I wrote "KITCHEN: 9x11 pyrex dish, muffin tins, round cake pan..." and so on.