The One Thing I Always Do to Prevent Moving Day Disasters (You Can Do It on Your Phone!)

After relocating more than 15 times in my life, I’ve learned a lot about what makes a move easier and what makes it a complete disaster. Some people swear by bubble wrap; others by color-coded labels. Me? I swear by my phone’s measuring app whenever I don’t have a real measuring tape on hand. It’s completely free and surprisingly accurate. Plus, it’s saved me from countless headaches, whether I forgot to bring my tape measure (or realized too late that I lost it somewhere in a moving box).

I wasn’t always this prepared, though. In fact, one of my worst moving mishaps turned me into a full-blown “always measure first” kind of person. I only needed to make this mistake once to move a whole lot smarter now. Here’s how I do it.

When my husband and I moved in together for the first time, we were still riding the high of merging apartments and dreaming up our new space. We didn’t think twice about whether our furniture would actually fit in the new place.

The problem was our beloved (and bulky) sofa — we hadn’t given a single thought to the doorway dimensions at our new place. When we arrived, full of energy and optimism, we quickly realized the front door was a few inches too narrow. The couch wouldn’t budge, no matter how we turned it. 

I’ll never forget the sight of us hoisting that sofa up over our balcony, balancing it like a Jenga piece to get it in through the slightly bigger porch door. It was stressful, a little dangerous, and honestly pretty embarrassing.

That experience taught me one thing: Measure everything — furniture, doorways, stairwells, hallways — before you move. And more importantly, you don’t need a fancy tape measure to do it. 

While I still appreciate a good old-fashioned tape measure now and then, I rely pretty heavily on the Measure app on my iPhone. It uses augmented reality (AR) to let you point your phone’s camera at an object and get its dimensions right on the screen. It’s surprisingly accurate and incredibly easy to use.

This app is useful for handling all kinds of moving challenges, like measuring a stairwell to see if your new dresser will fit or if it needs to be taken apart and reassembled once you’ve gotten upstairs. It’s also perfect for double-checking that a new bed frame will fit through a hallway without leaving scratches behind. In both cases, it can help you avoid costly, time-consuming mistakes.

This free phone app helps you avoid expensive delivery fees for furniture that doesn’t fit through your door or looks awkward in your space because it’s the wrong size. It also takes the stress out of moving days by ensuring every piece will fit just right in your new home. You’re already juggling so much — boxes, logistics, emotions — so the last thing you want is to find out your prized bookshelf won’t fit through the door after you’ve moved it across town.

So now, before any move, I walk through both the place I’m leaving and the one I’m heading to, phone in hand, measuring as I go. It’s a small step that makes a huge difference. 

Check out the The New Mover to discover the latest tips and most innovative hacks to make your next move the smoothest one yet. This content was presented by a sponsor; it was created independently by our editorial team.