I know, I know. I’ve been on an extended hiatus. But cut me some slack: I moved my husband, my little kids and everything I own across the country to a town where we don’t have family. I been busy.

We’ve been soaking up everything west Michigan has to offer – and thankfully, finally, finding competent trustworthy childcare so we can take an occasional break – and suddenly? Poof! It’s July. And it’s not just July – I start my first day of medical school on Monday!

But as we were in the middle of moving, I kept a list of all the things I found most useful during the verrry long process. Here are the top five things that made our move a bit (or a lot) more manageable.

Colored tape

Other people use stickers or markers to label their boxes. Those are both fine, except tape is multipurpose. You can close small boxes with it, and kids love it, too.

In my last move, since we only have five rooms in the whole apartment, I assigned one color to each room. I put that color tape on the room’s door, so that the friends helping us move could drop each box in the room that was its eventual home. For this move, since we have more rooms, I used it to label the floor to deliver a box: red for top floor, yellow for main floor and green for basement, in a stoplight theme. Here’s what I used.

Craigslist

I got our Crate and Barrel sectional sofa here. The IKEA daybed for my office and the baby’s high chair, too, for a grand total of $230.

But by far our biggest Craigslist score of this move? Boxes. I found someone selling what looked like a handful of broken down boxes for $5, and sent my husband to go get them. He called and asked, “How the hell am I supposed to fit all of these in the car?!” We packed our entire apartment with these almost brand new, meticulously opened and disassembled boxes. Easily the best $5 we’ve ever spent.

Don’t have time to hunt Craigslist for moving boxes? There’s always Amazon. Just make sure you buy boxes with handles.

A plan

My parents helped us move: they drove with us to Michigan in a caravan and everything. That meant we had houseguests right away, and they needed beds. As a result, our plan when we got to our house was 1. Get everything off the moving truck and into the house so we could return the Uhaul ASAP, 2. Re-assemble everyone’s bed, 3. Move every box to its correct floor (ayyye color coding!), 4. Slice open every box and move it to its correct room.

Instacart

You don’t know when you’ll get a chance to unpack your dishes. Shit, you might not even know where the grocery store is in your new home. Plus carryout for every meal gets gross pretty quick.

Don’t get me wrong: part of the fun of moving is sitting around on your living room floor that first night, surrounded by boxes, while you eat Chinese food straight out of the container with a plastic fork. But the next morning? Not so much.

Put in an Instacart order on one of your breaks from unloading, to make sure you have breakfast, snacks, beverages, paper plates and disposable utensils (recyclable, of course!) for the next few days.

Childcare

This was a crucial part of having my family come along: there was always at least once adult to watch the kids. On the day we loaded up the moving truck, one of my best and oldest friends entertained my little monsters while everyone else lugged boxes. When she needed a break, someone who needed a manual labor break popped into her air conditioned place.

If we could do it all again, we’d have arranged for a relative to keep our kids while we drove all of our stuff across the country, then flown back and moved the kids into an already-unpacked house. But having the help of friends and family at our old home and our new one definitely made it possible to make the trek with our brood.

Have you made a big move? What helped you keep it all together? Drop your ideas in the comments below.