Essential Post-Relocation Tips: Unpacking and Organising Your New Office

After you have used Adlam Transport’s professional office relocation services in Perth and the team has left you, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the task ahead. Drowning in an ocean of boxes and items, where do you even begin unpacking all your stuff and finding new places for it to go? The answers lie below, but before we share our tips and advice, remember that Adlam also offers professional unpacking services. Our experts will gladly assist you in getting everything out of the boxes and helping rearrange the objects you have designated as belonging to each space. 

Post-Relocation Tips

• Before you begin

We hope you are reading this article before any relocations have commenced and that you are not standing in a room full of unmarked boxes with no idea what is inside. The most critical thing you can do to facilitate a smooth, easy transition from one location to another is to plan carefully and label everything as you go. All other considerations are secondary in the shadow of these keystones. 

If you have no idea what is in each box or where it should go when you arrive, the chances of it finding its way to the correct room are slim. That’s not to say that the whole project is awash, and all is lost, far from it. It’s just that you will spend exponentially more time sorting through the mess and housing everything. It’s like having to make a second move once the first one is completed, and it makes much more sense to have that organisation in place beforehand. There will still be stumbling blocks to overcome, and issues to deal with, but the fundamentals will be in place, and everything else should be smoother as a result. 

• Account for everything

The first thing you should do when the dust settles, and you have a few moments to (literally) take stock, is to check that everything is where it should be. This should be made easy by the fact that you carefully inventoried and labelled each item and box as it was packed, so aligning the attached paperwork is all you need to do. Check off each item or box against your master copy and find anything missing. It may be that some boxes have been placed in the wrong rooms, so take as much time as necessary to get them all in the right location, account for any discrepancies, and move on. 

• Strategise

Once you have established that everything you set off with has arrived safely, it’s time to sit back for a moment and prioritise. The idea is to formulate a strategy for quickly and efficiently rearranging things and finding a logical place for everything. Again, your forethought and planning will be crucial in this endeavour, as the appropriate boxes for each space should already be in situ. This makes things immeasurably more manageable, and any minute spent planning and preparing carefully beforehand is probably worth ten when it’s time to reverse the process. Critical areas to focus on initially include:

• Kitchens—You will need a lot of patience, goodwill, and help from your employees to get through a hectic, stressful period. Nothing helps to facilitate this more than a nice cup of tea and a few biscuits strewn around to keep spirits up. 
• Bathrooms—Your new bathrooms shouldn’t require too much attention, provided they are clean and functional, but ensure ample toilet paper and soap are available before unpacking less crucial boxes elsewhere. 
• Workstations—People will be keen to personalise and arrange their individual spaces how they want them. This is great; the faster those working areas become functional, the faster things can get back on track, and work can resume. 

If you need help visualising each space and the optimum way to arrange things, draw a rudimentary room plan first. It doesn’t require artistic skill, just a set of shapes to represent each room, so you can label the activity or usage planned for each and prioritise which ones must be operational first. Having the storeroom organised and functional is useless if your employees have nowhere to sit and their computers are still in boxes.

• Unpack

Once you have all the furniture and storage to accommodate the contents of all those boxes, get to work unpacking them. Try to situate each item roughly where it will end up as it leaves the box. This is not necessarily the fastest method, but once each box is empty, there is nothing else to be done, except collapse it and move on to the next one. 

Moving things in stages gives the sensation of rapidity, but as long as the room is not the size of a football field and you’re carrying individual items from one end to the other, placing each item as close to its final spot as possible will help in the long run. Working in pairs is ideal; one person can empty the boxes and deal with any packaging while the other finds a home for each object. 

• Adapt and change the plan as necessary