Tips For a Stress Free Move When you buy a home, moving is part of the process. With so many people moving to Raleigh to buy homes, we have found some pretty simple steps people can take to make for a far more successful and stress-free move.

So if you’re one of the many people wondering how to move into a new house with as little stress as possible, here are 7 great tips to help:

Preparation / Start Early

We don’t plan to fail, we fail to plan. This quote can be applied anywhere in life and is especially true of buying a home and making a move! The easiest way to avoid a stressful move is to spend 10-20 minutes planning the move out. What do the logistics look like? What resources do we have and what ones do we need?

Put a list together of the things you need whether it’s boxes or people and prepare exactly how to make this move an easy one. Touch base with a company like Uhaul if you need to rent a truck for the day, their prices are extremely affordable.

If you’re able to spend a relatively short amount of time planning and preparing it will reduce the amount of stress involved in your move.

Buying and selling homes are stressful enough!

Yard Sale

Having a yard sale is one of the best ways to reduce the amount of items you need to move from house to house. If you can sell the stuff you no longer need you will save yourself from having to pack a bunch of the stuff you no longer need.

Additionally, the money you make from the yard sale may even be able to pay for your movers! If you’re anything like me, you’d prefer to pay for movers than actually move yourself, maybe even more. Maybe the yard sale will make you enough money that you can buy some new furniture or contribute to new repairs in the home!

Change of Address

Notify everyone that you have changed your address! This includes banks, insurance providers, USPS or anyone you do business with as well as the businesses that mail you important information.

Notifying the change of address is huge. Too often people don’t notify anyone and never receive the mail they need which creates far larger problems than had they spend the little bit of time notifying people they have a new address.

Here is a great list of who to notify when you are making the move to a new home and changing your address.

Moving / Packing Supplies

Packing supplies are a resource you are going to need in order to have a successful move. Plan it all out, what type of packing and moving supplies do you need?

Two of the bigger items you will need is a moving truck and people to help! It’s not easy making a move by yourself and it certainly isn’t easy if you don’t have a large truck to fit all of your belongings inside.

If you’re moving out of state this can make things a bit more complicated when it comes to recruiting help and a truck. You may even want to hire movers to take care of it all, though I’ve heard horror stories!

If you do hire movers make sure you are doing your research and that they have insurance because a lot can go wrong in a cross country move whether it’s things breaking or things going missing.

Ask for Help

Asking for help is not always the easiest thing to do and yet it can save you a lot of hassle and money. The more people you have helping the easier it will be to make the move. A lot of folks are afraid to ask for help even though most people are happy to help you!

When asking folks to help try to make it convenient for them and offer pizza or beers, or a night out on the town after all belongings are moved in. Whatever will motivate people to help you, offer that!

Once you’re packing and moving boxes into and out of the truck you’ll be thankful you asked for help. Be prepared to help these same family and friends move when it’s their turn to buy a home!

Sort and Organize your Belongings

One of the best things you can do is sort and organize your belongings before you start throwing everything into boxes. We have found that labeling things either by person who it belongs to or what room it is going to go in makes the most sense.

If you’re anything like me preparation and organization can be difficult. These simple tasks pay off though when it comes to being more efficient so you’ll want to force yourself to spend 15-30 minutes preparing and organizing. You’ll be happy you did.

Clean the Empty House Before Moving In

One of the best things you can do when moving into a new home is take care of everything before you move in. If you’re doing repairs or making any sort of changes, try to make them before you move into the new house. You’ll want to make sure the home is clean and spotless before you start bringing your stuff into the house. This is why we recommend hiring a house cleaner to go in and give it a deep clean.

Final thoughts to a stress-free move:

When you’re relocating these 7 tips will help you make it easy and successful. A lot of folks don’t realize just how stressful moving can be until they are caught up in the move and they have failed to follow any of the tips in this article.

Buying and selling homes is stressful enough, use these tips during your move to help reduce that stress!

Additional Helpful Moving and Home Buying Resources

Use these additional resources to make sound moving decisions.

Author Bio: Ryan Fitzgerald is a Realtor in North Carolina who enjoys creating content that buyers and sellers will find valuable in their real estate endeavors. You can find Ryan’s work on Forbes, US News, Realtor.com and more! When not creating content you can find Ryan at a coffee shop, the dog park, or hanging out with friends and family.