Everyone who’s approaching a relocation in NYC has the same question at the top of their mind. How can I make this easier on myself? It’s a good question to ask! Moving is consistently ranked as one of the most stressful activities a person goes through in their life—right up there with divorce and getting fired from your job! Looking for ways to make this experience easier can save you a lot of grief when the time actually comes to load up a truck and hit the road.
So, what can you do to make it easy? According to professional movers in New York City, it breaks down into four key areas of focus. Here’s what you need to do to take some of the burden off of yourself before, during and after your upcoming move.
Step 1: Plan ahead as much as possible
For most people, the “move” is the physical act of transporting their things from one place to another. But that’s incorrect. The “move” actually starts the moment you book those services. So, if it’s July 15th and you’re set to move on August 1st, your move doesn’t happen in two weeks: it starts right now, on July 15th. Taking this mindset will change the way you think about relocation and immediately take some of the burden out of it.
When you start to think about the move ahead of time, you give yourself move time to plan. You don’t have two days to pack up everything—you’ve got two weeks to do it! There’s much, much less stress involved in this timeline, and you’ll actually have time to coordinate. Here are some of the advantages to planning ahead:
- More time to pack and organize your items as you pack
- More time to accomplish pre-moving tasks
- Slower, more manageable pace when coordinating pre-move items
- More time to recognize obstacles and problems, and resolve them
- Fewer costs associated with moving mistakes or last-minute spending
- Ability to “stagger” the move using self-storage
The more planning you do ahead of time, the less you’ll need to do when “moving day” arrives. If you’re extremely proactive and have hired a moving service, you might not need to do anything at all!
Step 2: Stay organized every step of the way
Organization is the key to a stress-free move. The more organizations and systems you have in place, the less opportunity there is for error or uncertainty: the two biggest causes of stress when moving time rolls around.
If you’re a naturally organized person, developing simple systems will be easy for you. If you’re more creative and chaotic, you might need to work a little harder to bring order to your move. Use these examples to help jumpstart your organized brain, to keep track of the many moving parts and pieces of a relocation:
- Create a box naming convention system that makes packing and unpacking easy
- Coordinate your packing and moving room-by-room, for efficiency
- Draw up an itinerary or a timeline with a schedule, to keep yourself on track
- Create a budget and try to stick to it as you begin planning for a move
- Assign duties to every person helping you move and keep people on-task
- Hire a packing and moving company, and confirm services and timelines
Organization is the key to a smooth, efficient, headache-free move. And while you can’t anticipate everything that comes with moving, good planning and organization will leave little to the unknown. It won’t take you long to recognize the benefits of good organization as part of the pre-move and moving process.
Step 3: Work with professionals
One of the simplest ways to take the stress and burden out of moving is to hand it off to someone else! While most people mistakenly think that packing and moving services will break the bank, these services are actually quite affordable and well-worth the money. Think about how much stress you’ll save yourself on packing, lifting, loading, moving and unpacking!
The beauty of working with professional movers in New York City is that you can choose what level of service you need and what you want to pay for. Don’t need help packing? No problem: you can handle that yourself. Just need to rent a truck? It’s a small cost worth paying to make moving simpler. Need full-service, start-to-finish movers to handle absolutely everything for you? They’re experts for a reason! Here’s a look at some of the services worth investing in:
- Professional packing and unpacking
- Truck loading and transportation
- Moving truck or van rentals
- Heavy equipment and furniture moving
- Self-storage rentals
Instead of trying to figure out every element of your move and putting in all of the sweat to actually do it, many people jump at the chance to hand off this task to someone who can do it quicker and better. If you want to take the stress out of a move, it’s a good idea to budget for professional moving services.
Step 4: The little details matter (a lot!)
Everything can seem like a rush when you’re moving, and you might be trying to do a dozen different things all at the same time. Even if this is the case, it’s important to focus on what you’re doing and take the time to do it right. Paying attention to the details now will benefit you when the time to actually move comes around.
Make lists, prioritize items and when you do something, make sure it’s done the right way. This goes hand-in-hand with being organized, but takes it to another level. Sit down and make a long list of everything you need to do, then figure out what it takes to accomplish these tasks. Put them on a calendar or delegate them, then make sure they get done when they’re projected to. This is a great way to make sure you don’t forget the little things that can add up to big headaches during a move. Here are some good examples of attention to detail that matter big time:
- Changing addresses for bills, finances, employment and other official needs
- Remembering things like mail forwarding or emergency contact updates
- Labeling boxes and coordinating the overall moving process step-by-step
- Coordinating special accommodations for kids, pets and seniors during the move
- Having a preparedness plan for setbacks or disruptions to the move-in process
Small details make a big difference. If you take the time to think ahead, do things right and put in extra effort upfront, the relocation itself will go smooth and you’ll have peace of mind. Better still, if something doesn’t go according to plan, you won’t feel the need to panic—you’ll be able to rely on the proactive steps you’ve taken and adjust accordingly.
Moving can be simple if you make it that way
Moving is inherently stressful. Packing up everything you own and moving to a new place is an unavoidable source of stress! Thankfully, many of the pain points and headaches that come to fruition during the moving process are avoidable. You just need to take the right steps to make them less cumbersome.
Follow the above tips, as recommended by professional movers in New York City. With these steps in mind, you’ll have a much simpler time moving, with fewer headaches, stressors and setbacks to bother with.