Decorating a Rental: its starts with packing

I was talking to someone today on base and he found out I enjoy decorating. He started telling me that someone wanted to teach a class about decorating a rental, but we were interrupted and he wasn't able to finish what he was saying. I'm not sure what he was going to say but it did get me thinking about what I've learned about decorating rentals so far. This might be my first PCS, but I've been living in rentals now for several years.

Take my advice or leave it, this is just what I've figured out so far. This is from reading a lot of blogs, listening to advice, and a little bit of trial and error. And I'll probably change things as I gain more experience.

The key to unpacking and making your rental feel like home starts with PACKING.  For months I did research to figure out the best ways to pack, I got labels for each room off amazon, the labels were color coded so I could easily look at it to know what room it was going in. I put them on the two opposite corners so I could easily see where it would go. Next to each sticker I wrote the specific things that were in each box.

I really like this system and I will definitely be doing it in the future but I did face a few challenges.

• My apartment I was leaving was REALLY small and there were only so many places we could put packed boxes so a lot of the packing had to wait until we had the moving truck and could move boxes into it.
• I only had so many days of vacation from work so I wasn't there the main packing day-- so NONE of this happened; every box was pretty random. But I'm so grateful for all the great people that were willing to help, we definitely wouldn't have left when we did without them. 
• We had great friends that we knew from college come help us unload the moving truck. I wanted to have each box go directly to the room that it was meant to go in, but once again I didn't want to ask them to do my extra "crazy" moving system so everything just went wherever there was room. until it looked a little like this:
  

Once everything was out of the truck we started moving everything into the rooms they belonged in. We then quickly unpacked the contents. Things were put away with thought but not really well organized. I will be going back and organizing things a little better. But this got the stuff out of boxes and where we could use it. Most of our house was unpacked within three days.(Or maybe I'm forgetting how much wasn't done when I had to go back to Utah to teach.)

If you want your new place to feel like home get rid of those boxes as fast as possible! I still have 2 boxes sitting there reminding me I just moved in. I've also noticed the longer they wait the harder it is to unpack them. If you don't need what's in them get rid of it or put it in storage.

Now that you have your lovely belongings in your new place its time to decorate! My favorite part!