Moving house is a proverbially stressful experience. The day itself is chaotic, with last minute packing, trying to make sure none of your boxes get lost during the move and ensuring all is well with your new home and that your old home is in a fit state for its new occupants.

With a bit of planning, however, you can cut down the stress so that moving day is manageable, and doesn’t leave you tearing your hair out.

Schedule Schedule Schedule

Planning in advance is the best way to avoid stress. If you don’t have one already get a calendar, and mark off the days, weeks and months in advance of the move with deadlines, so important tasks are completed well in advance of the last minute. These could include wrapping up your last payments for utilities in your previous property, contacting your internet service provider and hitting packing goals.

Speaking of which…

Pack Smart

Use efficient systems for your packing to make sure everything ends up in the right place and can be unpacked and restored to working order without delay.

For example, use colours to mark boxes rather than writing. There’s a big risk that the mover, whether they’re from a professional removals firm or a helpful friend, won’t be able to understand whatever you’ve scrawled on the side of a box and deposit at random when they get it into your new house.

A better system is to assign colours to every room, and make sure everyone is informed: you can’t mis-read the bright red label on the side of the box that means it belongs in the bedroom, for example. You could also stick matching labels of the doors of relevant rooms on your first sweep through the house to really simplify things!

Storage Solutions

It’s worth looking into storage facilities when you move house. Putting some of your bulkier items into storage slims down the amount you have to shift on moving down. This means a quicker move, less chance for things to go wrong, get dropped or lost and, overall, less stress. Once you’ve unpacked the essentials you need to get your life up and running, you can retrieve other items from storage at your leisure.

Some London storage like byStored include extra services like picking up and dropping off your items, so they act as a removal firm into the bargain! This can really cut down the moving day stress.