School is coming to a close as well as many students’ lease. You may be thinking, oh I can pack it all up in a day or I don’t need to start I still have five weeks with finals. This would be wrong. If your lease is ending as soon as summer break begins, you need to start packing now. Whether you are moving to another house, or moving home you need to start figuring out what all you have. It will be more than you think.

As you begin to go through your piles of clothes, dishes, utensils and random junk, you will find that packing it all and moving it in a day will not be possible. It is time to begin preparing to move. This doesn’t mean packing everything up, but you can begin by packing up clothes that you no longer wear since the sun has finally warmed us up. That is a good first step.

The next thing you can do is pack up or throw away random junk. Yes, we all have that random junk drawer. Filled with various types of pencils, gum, that notebook filled with drawings instead of notes from biology, wrappers of various sorts and those random pieces of paper you are not quite sure what they were used for. Pack it up or throw it out. Not only is preparing to move about packing your belongings up, but it is also a time to throw things away.

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Next step is to create an area where all the packed things can go. Out of the way, in a corner, garage or just a designated area. This will help keep you organized and keep packed items out of the way as you pack up the rest.

Now it’s time to start taking inventory. What plates do you have? What cooking utensils do you have? Are any disgusting or not useful? Clean it out. Remember what you have, figure out what is old and throw out anything with mold.

You can slowly begin to clean. This is huge if your lease required a deposit and if you want it back, better make sure nothing is broken or trashed. Start with areas in your house that you don’t use often. The kitchen counter, the shower and your toilet are not the right places to start.

As it nears finals, you are not going to want to deal with packing and moving things. Instead, your focus should be on your academics. So take these steps in the next three weeks. Pack those things that are not used very often and get rid of that junk that has piled up randomly inside your home. This will make moving stress-free and a breeze. All that will be left is the heavy lifting and you can always get friends, family or random strangers to help you out.