Moving house, as the British put it, can be physically and mentally exhausting. But when you’ve done it as many times as my husband and I have, you learn a few tricks along the way. We’re past the stage where we can pack and move heavy boxes and furniture ourselves so we hired professionals for our recent move. But preparing for the moving company, as well as, all the unpacking is still on us.
Thankfully, we’re nearing the end of our recent relocation (see Goodbye Lake Oconee Georgia! and Hello Sunrise Trail Nova Scotia! blog posts). Everything has been moved into our new house and, more or less, placed in the intended rooms.
Ensuring the movers place your furniture and boxes where you want them to stay takes some advance planning. This brings me to the moving tip I’d like to share ― Use furniture placement signs. It’s nothing earth-shattering but during our recent move-in, when one of the movers first saw the signs shown below, he said “These pictures are super helpful. I wish every customer was like this.” So, I thought it might be worth sharing.
The idea is simple enough – you post pictures of the furniture where you want it to be placed. This makes it easier for the movers, whether they’re hired professionals or helpful family and friends, to place things in the desired locations. It reduces time and effort because they know where to put things without guessing or having to wait for verbal instructions. We had five movers carrying goods from the trucks into the house so there was no time to debate furniture placement. The signs also avoid the extra effort of having to relocate heavy and awkward furniture items after the fact.
Advance planning is the key to making the furniture placement signs work well. The first step is to take photos of all your furniture. You’ll want to take your photos long before you start taking apart the home you’re moving from. Keep in mind, this is really just a record-keeping exercise so there’s no need to spend time fussing or styling your shots. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate the point. Regular readers, by the way, may recognize the cabinet on the right as the Maker’s Cabinet I featured in one of my first blog posts The Ultimate Maker’s Cabinet. 
Assuming you’re selling your previous house, you may want to take your furniture photos on the same day your realtor takes photos for the real estate listing. In fact, if you missed a piece of furniture or missed taking photos entirely, you may be able to pull what you need from the real estate photos. For instance, when I realized I hadn’t taken a photo of my husband’s beloved recliner (Yikes!), I cropped it out of this real estate listing photo. You can catch the rest of these photos in my previous blog post Goodbye Lake Oconee Georgia!
There are probably many ways to create the actual furniture placement signs. I chose to create and print a slide deck in PowerPoint, sorted by room, with one page for each furniture item. Alternatively, I suppose you could simply enlarge and print photos from your phone.
Here’s a section of my PowerPoint slide deck shown in Slide Sorter mode.
And here’s a closer look at one of the individual signs.
It’s worth pointing out that you’ll need access to a printer to print the actual signs. If you won’t have a working printer during the move, you could print hard copies in advance and carry them with you. Just leave any undecided destination rooms blank and hand-write them later.
In addition to improving the efficiency on move-in day, creating furniture placement signs can help you with planning your new home. You can step through each piece of furniture and select its new location. In hindsight, I wish I had also measured and noted the dimensions for the larger pieces. That would have taken the guesswork out of deciding if a piece would fit in a potential location.
It’s also helpful, by the way, to create room signs for those which aren’t obvious. For instance, we plan to use an alcove off the living room as a TV Room. So, I posted a sign to clarify the room’s intended purpose. 
To ensure the paper signs won’t damage the walls, I attached them with a small piece of painters’ tape. Seeing the furniture pictured on the walls goes a long way to visualizing how a room will function. It’s also a great visual aid to review with family members and anyone else involved in the move. A final walkthrough can help ensure everyone is on the same page. Obviously, any last-minute adjustments can be made by repositioning the signs and/or hand-writing the changes.
Here’s an in-progress shot I took during the actual move-in. This furniture placement sign helped get the high-top table and stools into the intended spot in the dining room.
An unexpected side benefit of our furniture placement signs was the photos helped with furniture assembly. Typically, movers will take apart major furniture items such as beds, tables and cabinets before wrapping and loading them onto the moving truck. Then, they reassemble the items at their destination. Often, the people who disassemble are not the same people who reassemble. This was definitely the case in our recent move from Georgia to Nova Scotia. These folks have lots of experience putting furniture together but that doesn’t mean they instantly know how every piece should look ― especially if some of the parts get separated.
The furniture placement sign pictured below was invaluable in getting this 6-piece wall cabinet back together.
The furniture placement signs can also be helpful in identifying and/or locating missing pieces. The eight drawers pictured below arrived safely but, unfortunately, the dresser frame is still missing.
So, there you have it, a simple idea to make everyone’s life easier on move-in day. Just don’t be surprised if your mover says, and I quote, “This is awesome. Do you want to come work for us?” My response? “Heck no!”.
More Info
Previous blog posts mentioned in this blog post include:
. Goodbye Lake Oconee Georgia!
. Hello Sunrise Trail Nova Scotia!
. The Ultimate Maker’s Cabinet.
Today’s Takeaways
1. Consider posting furniture placement signs in your new home on move-in day.
2. Posting photos of furniture in their intended positions provides a great visual for everyone involved.
3. Posting photos of furniture can also help with furniture reassembly.
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