T his is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while now. We’ve lived in this house just over a year and when we moved in Ettie was 8 months old. We didn’t have a babysitter and the house we now live in was a building site at the time (only four rooms actually had floors!!) To complicate matters further, we had a trip to Centre Parcs booked the day we actually Completed on the new house and so we had to move everything out of Flat A on the Thursday morning – drive to Cumbria to enjoy a weekends ‘peace and quiet’, then drive back to our building site home to complete moving late on the Sunday evening! tips for moving house
The moral of this story – definitely don’t follow our lead. Follow these 10 stress busting tips to make moving house less stressful:
10 tips to make moving house less stressful
- Don’t take unwanted items with you – A house move is the perfect time to declutter. Don’t take anything with you that’s been locked in a loft for 2 years and covered in an inch worth of dust! Ok this doesn’t apply to your memory box from school that has the little pink teddy in from your first boyfriend! – but everything else should go!
- Start early– I’ve moved house A LOT – 28 times to be exact!! Because of that, I’ve become a little blazé when it comes to packing and always leave everything until the last minute! Don’t do this! Start the packing early; decorative items first, then seasonal clothes, make sure everything from the loft is sorted and easy to move. Once the easy wins are out of the way you can focus on the day-to-day things closer to the time.
- Label all your boxes: The last thing you need when you get to your new home is to be searching around 60 boxes looking for the bottle opener. Make sure everything from each room gets put in its own allocated box and make a note on top of the box of listing everything that’s contained within it;
- Pack up one room at a time: This might seem obvious but it will help you stay organised and on top of where things should go in the new place;
- Make up a Day 1 Box: A continuation of the previous point. Make up a box of everything you’ll need on day 1. This should include things like Loo roll, cutlery; tea bags, mugs; pyjamas for the whole family, a celebratory bottle of vino, champagne flutes – you know all the essentials
- Get help with the packing. This isn’t something we’ve done before but its a service I’ll 100% be using in the future especially now we have two children!. Removal companies will often help with all of the packing, load it into a van and transport it to your new home without you even needing to lift a finger. Make sure you get lots of moving quotes before choosing the company to go with as prices can vary widely. Some include the price of packing materials in the quote whilst others add it on.
- Stress Free Cleaning: If you’re in rented accommodation it may be useful to hire some move out cleaners to take the stress out of cleaning on what will already be a very stressful day.
- Sort out your paper work: Re-direct your post, make sure you take a note of all final meter readings and try to sort out your new wifi contract so its in place before you move into your new home;
- Use paper plates: You’re bound to leave a load stuff unpacked thinking it will all fit into one last box on moving day! (spoiler alert… it never does!) Don’t add to the load by leaving your kitchen stuff unpacked. Live on takeaways and paper plates for the week before moving, no one will judge.
- Get lots of sleep: This is really important because moving house can be stressful! Make sure you start stocking up on sleep the week before moving day as you’ll need a clear head to get everything sorted in your new home once moving day comes around.
And there you have it. My top 10 tips to make moving house less stressful. I hope you’ve found them useful. If you have any other ideas, please leave them in the comments below.
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