Following the Colour Code Road: How to Use Colour Coding to Make Your Move a Smooth One

Moving home is a challenging endeavour, even for the most organised of people. There are the pre-move arrangements such as contacting removalist services, setting up new schools for your kids, the moving day drama of carting your possessions to a new home, and the weeks of unpacking that follow. Even with a professional team of movers on your side things can get out of hand pretty quickly if you don't keep up during the chaos that ensues during a move.

That is why it is important that you create an intuitive system beforehand that doesn't require you to constantly be darting from one place to the next issuing requests. With a good system in place, your removalists will know exactly where everything needs to go without wasting time reading lengthy labels and directions.

This is why a colour coding scheme works perfectly on moving day. This allows for your movers to easily pick up your items and place them in the exact spot you wish for them to be in at your new home. This way, you need not worry that things will get misplaced or lost among a jumbled assortment of boxes.

What You Need to Get Started

A few weeks before moving day, purchase the following items.

  • Corrugated plastic sheets of various colours for your colour coding scheme.
  • Coloured card or paper of the same colours as your corrugated plastic sheets.
  • Some rolls of Washi tape.
  • A few rolls of duct tape.
  • Some marker pens

Prepare Your Colour Coding Scheme Before Your Move

First of all, you need to designate a colour to each of the rooms in your new home. Once you have done this, work out which items/boxes and pieces of furniture will be going into which room. Once you are clear on what is going in which room, prepare some coloured card for each box and item of furniture. You can use a small square for each side of every box, and use bigger sections of card for items of furniture.

Remember that these pieces of card need to be clearly visible to your movers, so place them accordingly. For furniture, use Washi tape to attach the card as this tape doesn't leave residue on surfaces. For your boxes, use duct tape and be sure to tape each edge of the card to ensure that the card is knocked or scraped off during the moving process.

Create Your Colour Code Road

Next, you need to make it easy for your movers to find the rooms in your new home so that the moving process operates as smoothly as possible, without the need for much instruction. Place coloured sections of card on the door of each room in the new house, and using the corrugated plastic, cut out some coloured arrows. Using the Washi tape, tape these arrows to the walls of your new home pointing in the direction of each room so that your movers won't ever need to break stride as they transport your furniture and possessions.

You can go a step further and write numbers in the centre of each coloured square. These numbers designate the area of the room that you wish for these items to be placed. Then simply leave some coloured numbers in each room to show movers where to place each item.

Organising your move in this way not only makes it easier for your movers to do their jobs, but it also means that your stress levels will be greatly reduced during the unpacking phase.

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