When we think of moving, our first impression is packing up the furniture, wrapping dishes and glasses in bubble wrap, and getting the core of our livable home ready for the big journey ahead. But many people overlook one of the more complicated spots to prepare for a move: the garage. While designed specifically to store the car, these spaces can often be the house’s utility drawer, and can throw a wrench in your moving schedule if not planned for accordingly.

Garages tend to have a lot of loose items about, and these items aren’t typically associated with each other: you might have tools for your car sitting on a metal shelf with rollers parked next to a box of yard games with a bed balancing against them. As such, you’ll need to start organizing like items together; this will help keep things from getting lost in the move, as well as allow you to maximize box space and reduce how much room everything will take up in the moving truck. It’ll also be an opportunity to help make things easier to unpack and properly organize when you reach your destination, which may have different size restrictions from your current garage.

Additionally, because of their often-chaotic nature, garages may have a lot of random hazards about which can cause trouble for both you and the movers carrying your goods. You’ll want to make sure contents aren’t balanced precariously about and that there are no loose items which might be slipped on or bumped into.

On the plus side, getting items out of a garage to the truck is one of the easier parts of the move: simply opening the large garage door and pulling out the car typically opens up a lot of room to place boxes for packing or carry things outside for transport.