When you’re unpacking and rearranging your new home after a move, it is easy to locate and position the big things – the sofas, the dining tables and the fridge – however, it is far less easy to locate some of the smaller and sometimes much more important things. So to avoid those hours spent searching for teabags, corkscrews or important paperwork, why not take some time to think things through before you move.1.    Plan – You may think that there is no real science to moving; that packing things couldn’t be easier. But in actual fact, it is important to plan out a packing strategy before you get going. Research suggests that packing by room is the most logical process, so that your boxes can be easily moved straight into the right room in your new home. Though if you have a lot of ornaments, pictures, clothes or rugs it may be more suitable to pack these items into their relevant categories to keep them safe. Jewellery for instance, may be best packed into one box to ensure that it doesn’t get lost amongst larger items or mistakenly thrown away amongst other packing materials. 2.    Label & Itinerary – When you’re packing your boxes, you may think that you know where everything is at the time, but when you’re faced with multiple removal boxes which all look the same, all of a sudden it may not be so clear. That is why labelling your boxes is key to your removals process. So if you’ve packed on a room-by-room basis, label each box with the relevant room, if you’ve packed on a category basis, label with something that you will remember. If you have the time, a quick itinerary of the contents will also help you to decipher what’s what at the other end and can save you from hours of sifting through boxes to find the one thing that you need. 3.    Suitable Packaging – Smaller items can often be delicate or fragile and may need some additional wrapping to ensure their safety. Bubble wrap, newspaper and box fillers are great for keeping ornaments, glasses, crockery and other fragile items safe, while jewellery should be carefully separated to avoid tangling or breakage. Delicate items should always be placed safely in sturdy moving boxes, secured with strong packing tape and labelled clearly as ‘Fragile – Handle With Care’.4.    Loading & Unloading – Loading and unloading multiple boxes onto the removals van can prove problematic for inexperienced movers. Whilst it may be OK physically it can be a strategic nightmare, with boxes ending up broken or crushed before you even arrive at your new home. So when you’re loading the moving van make sure that heavy boxes are kept on the bottom, while lighter boxes sit on the top. Also remember to load them onto the van in a logical order. There’s no point in carefully labelling your boxes by room to find that they are not close together on the removal van. 5.    Storage – If there are important documents or valuable items which you are worried might go missing during a move then you may want to look at some of the storage facilities around. With a range of small lockers, units and rooms, most storage facilities will have something that can be tailored to meet your needs. So why worry about the safety of that one little box when you can give yourself peace of mind by keeping it on a secure storage site during moving time.