Even if people love house hunting or shopping for a new office space, there are very few people who will say they love moving. Not only is it stressful and expensive, moving is a time where you lose all the carefully cultivated routines you’ve come to rely on to make your day run smoother.
From changing utilities and addresses to packing and unpacking, moving is a lot of change and a lot of work! To make it easier on yourself (and anyone around you), look for ways to make your move faster and easier by using these three tips.
1. Get rid of trash
We collect a lot of stuff we don’t need, and the longer we stay in one place, the more stuff we collect. From clothes to paperwork to broken appliances, we hang onto things we don’t need or won’t use for a variety of reasons. However, when you’re relocating (and most likely paying to move a lot of this stuff), you will find it’s a perfect time to start purging.
To stop yourself from becoming overwhelmed, start this task early. In fact, start this task the moment you know you may be moving, and start small. Focus on a drawer, or a closet—and not a whole room. Doing this is manageable chunks will make it seem attainable.
Some tips you can use to help figure out if you’ll need something later are:
- Does it fit properly? (for clothing)
- Is it in good condition? (for appliances and the like)
- Have you used it at any point in the last year? (for everything else)
2. Hire a moving company
You may think you’re going to save money by relocating your office or moving houses yourself, but you may be mistaken. When people consider the cost of movers, they only look at the bottom line: how much money they will spend. In fact, you need to consider what movers bring to the table apart from the straight “grab and pack” of the day of.
Here are a couple things that professional movers come with that you may not have considered:
Experience
When you first look at a space, you may think everything is going to fit smoothly, but you might need to get a bit more creative when everything starts coming in. Fact is, tight stairwells, narrow hallways and custom doors can spell disaster for your furniture, and yourself! If you don’t have the experience in moving furniture, you are likely to damage or even destroy your furniture or parts of your home by moving it yourself.
Equipment
From boxes, to dollies, to tie-down straps; movers come with all the bits and bobs they will need to safely and effectively move all your furniture and things from one place to another. Not to mention, this stuff costs money! Money you most likely don’t want to spend on stuff you won’t use again.
Liability
If you drop that glass coffee table, it’s whoops, so sad! However, your moving company has liability on damage to your items, and they will happily replace or give you the equivalent value to make sure you leave a happy customer!
3. Change your address before you move
The last thing you want is for important, sensitive or valuable documents to end up in the wrong hands because you forgot to change your address. Changing your address is quick and easy for most services and will prevent loads of headache if an important document is sent elsewhere.
