Moving house is an exciting yet daunting task, marked by the thrill of a new beginning and the burden of packing up a life’s worth of belongings.
However, amidst the chaos of cardboard boxes and moving trucks, it’s easy to overlook the environmental impact of relocating. With climate change becoming even more of a concern, finding ways to reduce our carbon footprint during significant life events has never been more critical.
From minimising waste to choosing eco-conscious moving companies, this article explores practical and innovative strategies to make your next sustainable move smooth, efficient, and environmentally friendly.
How To Pack Sustainably
So, you’re moving houses and looking for the best ways to pack sustainably? You’ve come to the right place!
Ask local businesses for old boxes
When moving houses, boxes are one of the most important items to store all your belongings. However, buying boxes each time you need them isn’t environmentally friendly or cost-effective. Therefore, one of the best things to do is ask local businesses if they have any used boxes you can take off their hands.
Get inventive when packing your belongings
Have you run out of boxes? Don’t stress, as there are other ways you can pack your belongings without needing cardboard boxes!
- Suitcases are a great way to pack and store your clothes
- Pots are fantastic for storing kitchen utensils
- Buckets can be used to hold laundry and bathroom items
Don’t use bubble wrap
Bubble wrap and Styrofoam beans are incredibly harmful to the environment, so use soft fabrics to pack up your fragile items. You can slide socks over wine glasses, wrap plates with t-shirts and protect your most fragile items with a towel. If you run out of soft fabrics, newspaper is another easy and cost-effective alternative.
Choose a removalist company that cares about the environment
At Ready Movers, we provide a packing service where we upcycle cardboard boxes, reducing the amount of waste during a move. When your belongings are packed up and ready to be moved, we put them in either our Euro 4 trucks or on trains for longer distances. Our Euro 4 trucks are focused on cleaning up emissions and reducing NOx and particulate matter. By putting your belongings on trains for longer distances, we cut down the amount of trucks on the road, therefore reducing carbon emissions.
What To Do With Moving Boxes After Unpacking
What should you do with your moving boxes once you’ve moved into your new home and unpacked?
Uses boxes for storage
Once you’ve finished unpacking at your new home, you may realise that some items you’ve unpacked will need to go into storage. When that happens, you’ll find it very convenient to keep a number of clean and study cardboard boxes where you can store all of the items you won’t be using straight away.
Give boxes to friends or family
Do you have friends or family members who will be moving in the near future? If so, you can give them your boxes to help with their move. Giving moving boxes away to friends and family is a fantastic option when they are still usable, and you don’t feel like going through the effort of selling them.
Donate the boxes to charity
If you don’t have any friends or family who need moving boxes, the next best thing is to donate them to charity. A lot of charities tend to organise events where they need lots of cardboard boxes to move items back and forth, so you should have no trouble donating them.
Recycle boxes through your removalists
As well as giving your friends and family boxes and donating them to charities, recycling them through your removalists is another sustainable way to get rid of them.
At Ready Movers, we collect used cardboard boxes free of charge after delivery. We re-use these boxes to cut down on waste.
Eco-Friendly Ways To Clean Your Old House
After you have packed up all your belongings and your removalists have taken them over to your new house, what are some eco-friendly ways to clean your old house?
Create rags from old, unwanted fabrics
Cleaning your old house once it is empty is almost as tedious as packing up all of your belongings, so one of the ways to make your cleaning easy and eco-friendly is to create rags from old, unwanted fabrics.
Whether it’s old clothes or unwanted linen that isn’t in a condition to be donated, tear them up into rags to be used to clean. This will avoid the need to buy cloths or paper towels, saving you time and money.
Use baking soda to get rid of stains
If you’ve found some stains on your carpets that are tough to get rid of, instead of using traditional stain removers, opt for a natural alternative using baking soda. To get rid of stains using baking soda, combine baking soda and water to create a paste. Leave the paste on the stain for 15 minutes and wipe off with a damp cloth.
Use white vinegar for an all-purpose cleaner
Did you know that you don’t have to use chemical sprays to clean all of the surfaces in your home? White vinegar is an eco-friendly alternative. If you have an empty spray bottle, clean it and mix white vinegar with lukewarm water to create a solution that can treat tough stains across all surfaces. You can also mix it with lemon juice or essential oils to give the area a nice scent.
Use lemons to get rid of grease and rust
If you struggle to find a great cleaning solution that gets rid of rust and grease, look no further than lemons. Lemons have strong antiseptic and antibacterial properties that can help in the effective removal of rust and grease without harming the environment. Whether you’re looking to clean grease off of your stove or clean a rusty pan, lemons do the trick. All you need to do is cut a lemon in half and use the juicy side to clean.
Hassle-Free Sustainable Home Removals with Ready Movers
Are you moving houses and are in search of reliable removalists? Look no further than Ready Movers. Whether you’re moving intrastate or across the country, our team of removalists is ready to make your sustainable move a hassle-free and seamless experience. From helping you pack to putting your belongings on a truck or train and helping you unpack at the other end, Ready Movers is a removalist company you can rely on. Contact us today for a free quote.