A Smart Student’s Guide To Optimizing The Packing Process

At this time of year, most college students are preparing to move out of their dorm rooms, apartments, and rentals for summer break elsewhere or to move into a new living environment. This can bring about overwhelming stress, especially when you’ve collected more items over the year than you first had when your family car arrived outside the residential halls during move-in day, packed to the ceiling with too many sweaters, that funky lamp that you’re still attached to for some reason, and extra shoes you convinced yourself that you needed.

Students don’t want to waste time packing when they could be getting together with friends before leaving town for the summer months, or resting after a stressful finals week. Here are four ways students can streamline their packing process.

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1. Start packing early (in “bursts”).

Two months before your anticipated move-out date, begin packing small things in increments. Is there a sleeping bag on top of your dresser that you haven’t touched since October? A strangely-shaped storage container for which you can’t seem to find a use? A wool sweater, even though the lowest temperature for the past month has been 70 degrees?

It shouldn’t be too hard to tell which items you can bear to part with for your last several weeks in your housing arrangement, so if you’re a student living in the dorms about to move home for the summer, send items home with family members who visit in the final months of school. If you’re moving from one off-campus location to another and can’t bring items anywhere earlier than when the lease begins, simply begin putting things into containers for easy moving later on.

Packing in multiple phases can ease the overwhelming thought of having to move everything out of your place all at once.

2. Use bags, not boxes, whenever possible.

When moving, you may not have access to a huge truck or U-Haul for moving your items. You’ll probably try to fit everything into a relatively small or medium-sized car. If that is the case, opt to pack a majority of your items in bags rather than boxes. If half of your items are in boxes, you can stack these on top of each seat of your car, and then use bags to fill in the awkwardly-shaped empty spaces in your car.

The problem with using only boxes to pack your things is that boxes have a finite shape and size that either will or won’t fit in your car. In contrast, bags can often be squished into smaller places. Bags tend to offer more flexibility in terms of where they can fit in a tightly packed car, so think wisely about which items really need to be protected by a box versus which items could be packed in a bag for greater packing flexibility.

3. Tape and label boxes well.

It is 100 times more helpful to have a labeled box than an unlabeled one when you’re looking at a room full of identical-looking boxes. It takes only a few seconds to jot down “kitchen stuff” or “old shoes” onto the top of a box with a marker, so do yourself a favor and label most if not every box with a general word or two describing what’s in it.

While you’re at it, make sure all of your boxes are sufficiently taped shut. You really don’t want any box breaking during move-out when you ambitiously think you can carry four boxes at once.

4. Use social media to sell bulky items you no longer need.

Moving out of a dorm room into an apartment with its own full-size refrigerator? You likely don’t need that little mini fridge anymore. Most universities have a Facebook page called “Free and For Sale” or a similar title for students to buy, sell, and trade virtually anything. Take a few photos of that extra toaster oven, mini fridge or even a set of clothes you never wear and create a social media post online.

These posts gather instant attention most times, and you may even find that six people comment within 10 minutes expressing interest in the item. If you’re needing to get rid of some stuff as fast as possible, a Facebook post will be the most efficient way to get your listing out there.

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Next time you need to move out, make sure to think through all of the logistics involved in moving, and be critical of what you keep and what you discard. If you’re having trouble parting with some clothes that you happen to have left in your closet for over a year, remind yourself of why you haven’t worn them recently, and consider donating or selling them.

Think about which items you use every day, once a week, and once a year, and selectively sort what you need to take with you and what can hit the recycle bin. A well-planned packing timeline can greatly reduce your stress and even physical effort when moving lots of items.