When moving your home also means moving your workplace, finding a good mover and getting packed can be the least of your worries. Detroit-area blogger and work-at-home mom Melissa Summers of SuburbanBliss.net and MightyJunior.com, who has moved twice in just over a year, shared her top five moving tips for home-based entrepreneurs. (Interview conducted by Maia Nolan).

1. Plan ahead.

After two moves with two kids and two home businesses, Summers can think of some things she wishes she’d done differently.

“My second move was far more unorganized than my first actually, mostly because I was anxious to move the first time and not so much the second,” she said. “During the first move, I did not have the Internet set up at the new house until a week after we’d moved in. Looking back, I wish we’d had it set up before we even moved in. Even if it meant living without our television for a few days.”

Try to set up your schedule and your space ahead of time so your work transition is as smooth as possible.

“For me it was a matter of getting my work life set on auto pilot for a couple of weeks between the actual move and the unpacking period,” Summers said. “Making sure things were where they’d be easy to find in those chaotic days after the move.”

2. Separate essentials.

“I am very lucky in that my work is all stored on my laptop, so not difficult to unpack or pack,” Summers said. “I prepared a week of work so I didn’t have to worry about my job for a week after we moved. My husband does some freelance, though, so we were careful to pack ‘necessary’ equipment separate from things from our office that served solely as decor. We thought about what he needs on a day-to-day basis. Essentials like envelopes, paper, packaging samples, all those items went in a box we moved ourselves the day before our official moving day. I used this same technique for moving a set of sheets for each of our beds and our toiletries and clothes.”

3. Make sure your new home can accommodate your business.

Summers, her husband Logan, and their two children recently moved into a smaller home. “We downsized for this move due to the economy,” she said. “But we made sure there would be at least a nook to contain our office.”

4. Don’t be afraid to purge.

Summers said moving is the perfect time to clean out your files. “Sometimes the only way to be bold enough to get rid of excess paperwork and things you’re not sure you need but maybe someday you will… is to face actually packing those things up and moving them,” she said. “Or worse, paying someone to move boxes of things you’re not even sure you’ll ever need again.”

5. Do what works for you.

Moving with kids and a home-based business can be doubly stressful, so be realistic about the best way for you to move. For Summers, organization was key, so she ended up doing a lot of the work herself rather than delegating to her children.

“I’m not nice enough to let the kids help with moving,” she joked.

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