My goal when I began the process of packing up&nbsp;our then 1355 sq ft condo I wanted to make sure that my husband and family would know where I wanted things to go and what was in which box in case I was not able to be there, considering I would be 7 months pregnant at the time we listed our house. I knew that I wouldn't be able to move around as quickly as I wanted carrying this extra load and I also couldn't be at the condo, new house and storage shelter all at the same time. So knowing the goal I set out to find a way to organize the move so anyone could jump in and help. I located this pinterest post by A Bowl Full of Lemons (love her!!!!)
<a href="http://www.abowlfulloflemons.net/2012/06/how-to-organize-your-move-2.html">How To Organize Your Move</a>

It was just what I needed! I had an old binder laying around and was able to begin the process. I based my room categories on what I had in my house that we were looking for in our new home. You see we hadn't yet bought the home...at the time the binder was created we were just decluttering and packing up extra stuff to prep to put the house on the market. I had to use my wanted rooms instead of my actual rooms. The categories I had were:

Master Bedroom
Master Bathroom
Guest Bathroom
Guest Room
Babies Room
Office
Kitchen
Dining Room
Decor/Misc.
Living Room

I had the prime color dots that I found during one of my decluttering moments in my office and since that wasn't enough of a color variety I went and picked up some pastel colors as well. I Then assigned each room a color. i don't remember all of the assignments but I do remember the Kitchen was red and my daughters room was pink. 
<ul>Boxing/Packing Up</ul>
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I chose to pack room by room starting with our guest room/baby room/office because it had the most items that weren't used regularly in it. We were prepping for our angels arrival so we had to clean it out anyway. I decided I wanted to declutter the space prior to packing, so I tackled/packed areas based on use. For example, we had two bookshelves full of books. I wanted to use those shelves for baby clothes and diapers so I went through all the books that were there and created the donate throw away and pack piles. I then packed those that were to be kept and put a label on it. The label gave a high level description of what was in the box, the box number and the box color - which told me what room it went into in the new house. In the binder, I went to that room's page and wrote down the box number and description which in this case was personal books.
<ul>The Good</ul>
Would I do this again? Heck yeah!!!! This system allowed me to know that I had X number of boxes for the living room. X number for the kitchen etc. I also knew at a glance which box number to look for if we were hunting for something specific. the storage facility not only looked heavenly, but made it easy to locate things if we needed them. My mother even commented on how great it looked and how we were able to use every single inch. When we did finally get to the house and were beginning to unpack, the system was great because we knew to look for all the red dots when we were washing and putting up all the dishes. When I got ready to do the baby's room I knew to look for all the pink dots. It made those processes a lot easier.

<strong>The Bad</strong>

In our case the bad was the craziness of our move (not the normal situation) so we had to just go for what we knew vs the organized way I imagined/planned the move to be. We ended up having to move our house before the storage unit and the last items I. The condo seemed to multiply (there were more than I imagined) so we didn't get those items labeled so needless to say some items were lost because In a rush I don't know how they were removed from the house...my gut says they accidentally got mixed up with our last Goodwill run. 

<strong>The Lessons Learned</strong>

It was unfortunate that we had to move our items into the garage of the house vs the house itself, because stuff was just stacked/piled on top of one another in a limited amount of space. When we were finally able to move in, it did help because we just grabbed the stuff closest to the door and put it where it went based on the colored tags.  We were able to quickly assess where things went if it had a label on the box, but those random last minute things were all over the place. In a perfect world you can move from one place to another all at once and you would have EVERYTHING packed or you would move those things in last or have them all grouped together. You would want a large enough work force so you can take all the items to the rooms where they belong instead of putting them in a staging area (unless that's what you want). You could also put up your room labels with colors on them, which would be helpful for those who don't know which rooms are what or if you aren't there to help unload. The first load that we unloaded, I was there to supervise and the guys began stacking the items by room/color in the garage, but as time slipped away, I was needed elsewhere and the garage got fuller and fuller the guys abandoned that idea and they started putting it in...however they could. I also forgot to check off boxes as we loaded and unpacked them so now it is impossible for me to tell you if a box is missing or not...except for when I would look for something like my bed skirt and silverware drawer organizer. 

The good thing is you can do this even if you don't choose to declutter first, but that would be my advice so you aren't moving unnecessary items into a new space. Also, this would work even if you didn't have the amount of time we did to move it to storage first. It actually may work better for you since all the boxes would be in one place in your home and therefore would already be all together based on room.
<ul>Bottom Line</ul>
This is a win win pin and a definite keeper.