I've moved fewer times in my life than most people. When I was seven, we moved out of a house we were remodeling, and then back into the remodeled house, but I was little so I didn't really do much, nor do I remember much about it.

When I was 20, I moved into a condo across town. I had the luxury of a kind father and a lot of time. I had very little furniture, so I could mostly just use my VW Bug to get what I needed from point A to point B.

Now I'm 27 and we've moved into a house! And we did it quickly! The day our offer was accepted was only one month before closing, and we wanted to get into the house ASAP, so we started shuttling our stuff from the condo to the house the day we closed.

That means we had to start packing even before we owned the house. So, while I know every move is different and each person's belongings are different, here are just a few things I learned along the way.

I knew I wouldn't be crafting while we were packing up and moving, so I packed up and labeled a bunch of boxes/drawers that were going to live in my craft room - yes, I have a craft room! Maybe normal people would call it an office.

1. Have a game plan.

Easier said than done, I know, but have a rough idea of what you can pack up without missing it and what you should leave until the last minute. Also, it's good to have an idea of what rooms your belongings are going to end up in. I made lists for every room in our house, even silly things like the linen closest.

2. Label things!

Using a sharpie, label your boxes. That way you don't have to try to commit everything to memory, and if you have people helping you, they'll know which room to put a box in once they bring it inside.

3. Use clothing, towels and linen to pad boxes.

Packing peanuts are the worst, and I always feel bad tossing out bubble wrap and packing paper. Using your clothes and towels as padding will help the environment, and kill two birds with one stone! You have to pack all that stuff anyway, so might as well have it work double-duty. I packed all of my tchotchkes in an empty plastic drawer, and wrapped them up in my scarves. I thought it was pretty clever!

4. Find free boxes!

Call upon your friends and family to see if they've got any leftover from a previous move. Other great places to ask are liquor stores and bookstores. We got several that were great for transporting our alcohol collection (which will now live in the bar in the basement!). The biggest haul we got was from Barnes and Noble - I had great timing! They were about to recycle all of them, and they were all broken down, so I got to fit a huge stack in my trunk. We needed to re-use a handful of boxes, so we would have had to find more boxes if we needed to put every single thing in the boxes at the same time, but luckily since we were just going across town, we could unpack a few boxes and bring them back to the condo and load them up again.

So much easier to move my clothes like this! But now the trick will be making them all fit in our tiny closet...and still leave room for Nathaniel's stuff.

5. Don't unhang your clothes.

I saw this trick on Pinterest. You just put a garbage bag around the bottom of the clothes, and tie it up around the necks of the hangers. This is great because you save the time of unhanging and re-hanging your clothes, and they all stay organized and are super easy to put back up. You can still use the trash bags for trash when you're done, too!

6. Get into a groove.

Find some music or put something on Netflix that you can just play in the background. You're not going to have time to pay attention to what you're listening to/watching, but once you've found your groove, you'll just be able to keep going and going!

Any great things you've learned from packing and moving? I'd love to hear!