Apps to Keep You Organized During a Move

When you’re moving during the competitive summer months, time is of the essence. And I threw it all away when I moved last year for one simple reason: I was living in a pigsty.

My house was a mess and my digital space was even worse. It’s true that I was going through a lot at the time and was being forced to move after spending years in the same place. As I descended further into overload, trying to make heads or tails of the movement, the disorder simply increased. It got so bad that I missed out on some potential apartments because I lost the app link or completely forgot about it.

I would like to say that I learned from my mistakes and developed a great system of physical organization, but I didn’t. My house remained a pigsty until the day I left. However, I he did get research tools to help me track the digital aspects of change. And thanks to these tools – which I’ve listed below – I found a new place for the trash in no time.

When I first started looking for an apartment, I was the kind of person who always had 1,000 tabs open at a time. Now I only have 500 and I would like to thank OneTab for that.

This browser-independent tool (chrome, fire Fox, EdgeIt is Safari,) allowed me to easily see and organize multiple tabs and even different browser windows, which made it much easier to keep track of the links and listings I needed. Not only did it close all my tabs, but it also generated a list of them – time-stamped by session – that I could reopen, export, share as a web page, and more. As a result, I no longer avoided looking at the mess that was my laptop, which meant I started responding to owners more quickly.

But it only helped me a little. The real game changer was Notion.

My biggest mistake was not having an organizational system in place from the beginning. Once I created a dedicated workspace in Notion for everything from tracking my apartment search to storing all the checklists I need before, during, and after the move, life just got a whole lot easier.

I tried other apps, but they weren’t as customizable or intuitive to me as Notion. Creating a dedicated workspace for the different parts of my move was easy because I could easily divide everything into different pages for research on moving, budgeting, organizing, and more. The notion also offers ready-made templatesmany of which are free, created by others who have gone through similar movements – like This one that I used in my research or this model my colleague Emma Roth used it. Having a pre-made database with fields for rent, location, and so on saved a lot of time.

What I really liked – and what really sped things up – were Notion’s web clippers and third-party integrations. O web cutters It allowed me to quickly save Zillow listings or Yelp searches directly to my Notion workspace, for example. This alone reduced my tabs much more than OneTab. Notion also allowed me to sync apps like Google Calendar so I could more easily keep track of all my rides and deadlines in one place.

Okay, I’ll be honest: I didn’t stumble on Gmail Tabs extension until after I move, but I know I’ll be relying heavily on the desktop app extension for the next one. The extension, which I waxed poetic about in this post, offers a level of flexibility that goes far beyond Gmail’s built-in tab options. It lets you turn your labels or search queries into tabs that you can pin to the top of your inbox, right where Gmail’s Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forum tabs live. You can then set up filters to funnel all relevant emails into the appropriate categories.

This means you can, for example, create categories for property notification emails from sites like Zillow or HotPads, rental apps, and other things for quick and easy access. You can delete and edit tab names as many times as you like, making them a useful organization tool throughout the moving process. Once you find a location, you can get rid of that tab and add a new one for all moving company-related emails, another for incoming emails about things you might be selling, for example, via Craigslist, and more. .

Those final weeks before you move are killer, and I found myself running around frantically. I was juggling dozens of things at once and it felt like my brain was about to explode with information and dates. So I outsourced half of my brain to Alexa — sort of. I synced my Google Calendar with my Echo Show 8. That way, whenever a viewing opportunity came up, I could tell Alexa to add it to my calendar. Alexa was also useful for keeping track of all the things I suddenly remembered at the last minute, like an address change for a subscription or business.

These are the most important things, but there were smaller tools that have also helped me or people I know that I think are worth sharing.

AI chatbots like Google’s ChatGPT or Gemini may not always be the brightest bots, but they can be useful for planning and research purposes. ChatGPT helped a lot when I needed to break down the moving process into smaller steps, so I felt less overwhelmed. I found it was also useful for summarizing articles and finding the best real estate websites in my area.

Many property websites offer features that can also help keep you organized, so be sure to check them out. I used Zillow a lot, so the Zillow Renter Center stayed out. It offers an easy, centralized way to compare listings, manage tours, track applications, message potential homeowners, and more.

Last but not least, there are several inventory apps that can help you keep track of where you packed everything. I know some people who used Lucky, an iOS app that helps you create a visual inventory of your stuff, with photos. The premium tier, which costs $50 per month, also lets you create QR codes for your moving boxes (although most people won’t need to use it for more than a month or two).