5 Surprises When Moving to a New Office

Moving is a lot of work, a statement that doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s done it. On the surface, relocating your business office would seem easier than moving your entire house or apartment. After all, it’s probably a lot smaller with less stuff. Yet, when I undertook this task at the start of the year, I found a few surprises. Here’s what I learned.

1. You discover more stuff than you think you had. Packing is a perfect time to sort through stuff and cleanse a bit. What I didn’t realize was how much stuff I had managed to put into my small office cupboards and desk drawers. I had planned to pack rather quickly, thinking there wasn’t much. Packing took more time than expected as I sorted, tossed, recycled, and organized. I also needed more boxes. My colleague was surprised at how much smaller his new office is, and he initially struggled to get set up. Luckily, with my organizational skills and those of our landlord, we created a space that feels right to him.

2. Relocating one block is harder than moving farther away. My coworker and I were moving only a block away. In theory, this makes the move easier. In practice, it means you’re not packing as thoroughly as you might if you were loading up a moving van on one day to go across town. Instead, I packed most of the stuff and then hauled a box at a time. On day before Christmas, I moved two boxes. I planned to come back and get more the next day, but then I got sick right before the holiday. That meant I wasn’t done by the 31st as I’d anticipated.

3. Moving an office takes longer than you might guess. My coworker and I moved in phases over the Christmas and New Year holidays. The advantage to this was not interrupting our work flow too much; things are quiet that time of year for us. As I mentioned, I moved a few boxes before Christmas. The week of New Year’s Day, I was in the office, but I spent most of the time moving boxes back and forth. I finally loaded up the car one day, even though it was only a block, just to get the rest of the stuff. I enlisted help from my husband and daughter. With downtown Raleigh streets quiet, it was easy to get everything in the car and then park it front of the new office.

4. Unpacking takes a long time — time away from work. Once in the new office, I unpacked the main items quickly and got my desk set up. Our new landlord provides furniture and other items, most of which weren’t ready yet. So we spent the first few weeks of January half unpacked, with boxes in the corner. Once a week, some piece of furniture would arrive and we could do just a little bit more. For example, the large filing cabinet arrived and we unpacked those boxes. The cubbies arrived, and I could put a lot of my random desk stuff away. But then I had to go buy some cloth bins for the cubbies. And, of course, Target didn’t have eight of them. I ended up going to three different Targets on three separate occasions to get enough of the right color bins. I came in one January weekend to hang things on the walls at last. Our rug finally arrived on February 6, but I needed help to put it in place, so that finally happened February 10. Because we still had to work during this time, the tasks were spread out. That means living with an office not “done” for a long time!

5. Don’t forget those “other” things about moving. Our move was a bit more sudden than we probably would have liked, because we weren’t sure we were going to move and then, suddenly, we were. That meant we were slow to get our address set up with the post office, and we were gathering mail at two locations for a few weeks. We also had some problems getting our phones set up, which is troublesome when you’re trying to work! I also spent time educating people on our new location, writing up some parking directions I could send to people, sending emails, asking our bookkeeper to change the invoices, and more. Some of these tasks are little, but it’s still time away from actual work.

Now, we’re finally settled in and rolling. We hope we don’t have to move again for years, but if we do, I’ll take a few lessons from this experience:

Plan more about when we do the move.
Try to organize the move so it happens in one day, rather than in phases.
If possible, allow more time before the move to get things set up (mail, phone, furniture at the new office).
Take a day “off” of work if needed, or close the office, because it’s rather distracting to try to work with stuff all over the place!

Have you moved offices? What tips would you add?