Moving house survival guide: the boxes that 'may send you over the edge'

No matter who you are, moving is a thankless task – physically grueling and intensely emotional.

There’s the time before, when the culling begins. Then trips down memory lane you will inevitably take to distract yourself from the task at hand (before you know it, you’ve lost yourself in your old school yearbook or holiday snaps from 15 years ago).

And then there’s the period where you’re between houses and life feels somehow suspended in mid air. And then the clincher, the days when you’re living out of boxes, can’t find the shirt you need for work, let alone the can opener. Or worse, the bed sheets.

As someone who has moved 12 times and counting since becoming an adult (interstate, overseas, across town and around the corner), here are my tender tips:

• Start packing a week prior.
• Label every box and assign it to the room it needs to land in – even a hastily scrawled “junk drawer” is better than no label.
• Having a professional to help pack (rope in a dependable niece or nephew if funds are tight) may well be the ultimate luxury.
• If there are boxes that you did not unpack from your last move, donate the contents to the local Salvos store. Or at the very least, Marie Kondo it!
• Have a small bag that travels with you. Contents: phone charger, essential toiletries, a mug or two for tea, teabags, bottle opener (you may need it that evening), PJs and change of clothes. And don’t forget a roll of loo paper.
• Use clear storage containers for your high-priority stuff that you’ll want to access on day one.
• Clean linen can be a great thing to place between large kitchen items like platters, plates and big dishes.
• Ensure you have scissors on hand and don’t forget zip-lock bags for rogue screws and hooks plus remote controls and little knick-knacks you’ll inevitably find.
• Do not have a miscellaneous box. It will be a box of shame and may send you over the edge. Everything needs to have a proper place.
• Come hell or highwater, give yourself a tight deadline to unpack those boxes. One week post move, maximum.
• It might sound a bit mad, but I kiss the walls of the house when I move out and kiss the ‘new walls’ when I move in. It’s a superstition I can’t shake.
• Without a doubt, the worst job is having to clean the house you’re leaving. The only advice I have is that if you can splurge, do it, call the professionals.
• And if it helps, think of it like this: whether you’re moving out, moving in or moving on – it can be in some ways cathartic.

There’s the sheer hell of it, the enormity, the emotion (and the tears) as well as the good old-fashioned gumption required.

Then there is peace that lands in the months after it’s done. And the best bit? The excitement of hope at the dawn of a whole new chapter of your life.