Every year, one in five families makes a move -- and this year, it could be your family on the road.

No doubt about it, moving can present the organisational challenge of a lifetime. Every habit, every routine, every tiny piece of the mosaic of your life is tossed at random into a huge, cluttered van, to be shaken out and reassembled at the other end. Moving on? Try these road-tested tips for an organised move.

You tear your tender self away from a known and sheltered mooring, not sure how or what or when the tiny wounds will bleed. What will you miss? Friendly faces at the local shop? An entire box of cherished Christmas decorations (including the stocking you've had since your first birthday)? Is it the simple biological stress of finding a new place and time for your morning caffeine ritual? Or is it the sheer grinding misery of changing everything about your life?



Establish Move Central, and Make It Portable


Enter Move Central. Even if you never use a planner at home or on the job, a business planner or moving notebook is more important to a move than boxes and tape. Find one at the local office supply store. Get one with big pages, one for each day, and throw in some business card holders, plastic pouches and receipt envelopes.

How will you use it? Let me count the ways. During the crazy pre-move house-hunting days, you'll track phone calls, make notes on houses you've toured, and gather phone numbers for the new close friends you'll make --- all those rental agents and mortgage people and moving-van guys and handymen you'll come to know and loathe quite intimately in the coming weeks. Tuck all business cards into their own little slots for easy reference. Make notes of the seventeen consecutive days you've spent trying to track down the Tile Man (after he's gotten your money but before you've seen Tile One go up on the kitchen wall).


Filling


Cram snippets of flooring and wallpaper, paint swatches and drapery goods into a see-through zipper pouch for at-the-store decorating reference. Dedicate one receipt envelope for those fix-up-the-old-place receipts. Another receipt envelope holds receipts generated by house-hunting trips and travel to your new home. Stuff everything in there, and you'll thank yourself at tax time!

After the move, you'll use Move Central to schedule appointments to turn on your lights, water, TV and other essentials of life. Treat Move Central as just another body part --- it should be with you always. Handles and outside pockets let it replace your purse/wallet. Yes, you'll develop a permanent list to one side from the weight, but like that caused by a hip-hugging toddler, it's temporary. Having all your information in one place right at hand is key to a smooth and sane move.

"There Is No Such Thing As Too Many Labels"

Labels. Computer-generated labels. Hundreds of them. Repeat after me: "There is no such thing as too many labels."

You will go to the office supply store. You will purchase a large box of the cheapest computer labels available for your computer printer. If you have an old tractor-feed printer in the kids' room somewhere, it's perfect for this task.

Load that printer up and let it chug out your labels while you go try and find Tile Man one more time. You'll end up with stacks and stacks of labels. Next step: get 'em on the boxes.
This one's easy. Give each packer, whether you pay somebody else or assign the chore to your not-at-all-cheerful family, a stack of labels for whatever room s/he is packing. As each box is packed, just slap a label in the upper-left-hand corner of every side of the box.
This is not overkill. At the new house, you will thank yourself.

Finally, decide where you want your storage boxes to live until you can sort them out. Tape a "Storage" sign high up on that wall, whether it's garage or extra bedroom or the long wall in your master bedroom.

Pack the Essentials Last

The concept of the "Survival Box" is one dear to the hearts of all moving advisers and organisational experts. You know what that is, right? It's a box containing the essentials of life: coffeemaker and children's night-time loveys, bed sheets and blankets and pillows, an alarm clock. Paint it red, plaster it with Little Mermaid stickers, do something to it so it stands out like a sore thumb, and put it in the truck last, so it's first out in the new house.
Your Survival Box should contain all those items you'll need for the first day and night in your new home. With small children, think about including dishes, cereal and the paraphernalia of a family breakfast.

Don't stop there! Think bigger than a single box. Those same small children can be entertained quite handily if you pack the boxes containing television, VCR and Barney tapes at the back end of the truck! Will you need cleaning tools and a vacuum? A tool box to assemble furniture and hang art? Think about your immediate needs, and hold those essentials back until the bitter end.

Are you moving? It means more than exchanging one house, one town, one county for another. Think of the butterfly. If it never moved from caterpillar quarters, the world would be deprived of an awful lot of bright, colourful, fluttering wings!