It’s officially been one month since we moved to our dream house…and while it definitely does NOT look like our dream house just yet, I can sure say that I’ve learned alot through our very first moving experience.
I’ve received many emails asking how things are going so I figured it was time for a “moving update”. Things are going great and we LOVE being in our new home! And while there are a few things we might do different next time {which won’t be for a long time!} — there are many things we are glad we did this time.
So if you’re planning a big move any time soon, here are a few of MY moving tips.
5 Things I’m SO Glad We Did:.
1. We took our time.
Fortunately, the sellers of our new house were flexible and the buyers of our old house were in no hurry to move; so we had two weeks of overlap between moving into our new house and out of our old house. This gave us plenty of time to pack up our old house, clean the new house before we moved in, clean the old house after we moved out, etc.
I never felt “rushed” and I’m thankful for that!
2. We had a plan.
You know me, I ALWAYS have a plan…so our moving process was no different!
Even though the other sellers and buyers didn’t have a timeline, we still decided to set a specific “move in date” and a specific “move out date” for ourselves — just to give us something to work towards. We knew we wanted to do the bulk of our moving and unpacking during Dave’s two-week Christmas break so we had a bunch of help lined up, a moving truck reserved for 3 days (in case we had bad weather), a room “reserved” at Dave’s parent’s house since we wouldn’t have our bedroom set up, and our necessities packed seperatly from all our other belongings so we could still “get by”.
For the most part, everything went according to plan. Our moving day was about as good as we could ask for in December…only a few days before Christmas!
3. We labeled everything!
Ok, I’ll admit, towards the end of the packing process, everything was simply labeled “Miscellaneous Kitchen” Miscellaneous Bedroom” etc. But for the most part, every box was properly labeled so all we had to do was put the boxes into the appropriate rooms…which made it easy for our moving helpers too!
This also made unpacking a very quick process because I could focus on the most important boxes first and then work my way down to the less important stuff.
4. We mapped out our renovation process:
Seriously, this saved us SO much time!
Before we even moved in, we decided what projects we wanted to tackel and in what order. We felt it was important to do the master bedroom, master bathroom, office, and guest bedroom first. Those rooms are all on one side of the house…and they are the rooms we would like to use as soon as possible. So, when it was time to move in, we didn’t put anything in those rooms.
We are currently living in the upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms and have plenty of space. Plus, by moving everything directly upstairs, we didn’t need to move our furniture twice and we were able to start ripping up carpeting and tearing out closets right away!
5. We expected the unexpected.
Since our house is 120 years old, we didn’t expect everything to be in tip-top shape. We KNEW there would be problems, we knew our heat bills would be much more expensive, we knew there would be lots and lots of things to update and change, and we also knew it was not going to happen over night!
This is our Dream House and when we purchased it, we knew it was going to take some work. And since we’ve already renovated one house, we expected things to go wrong. So, we didn’t freak out when we got our first heat bill; we didn’t get too worried when our bathroom pipes froze; we didn’t even get bent out of shape when we pulled our refrigerator out and saw this…!
We’re “rolling with the punches” over here and while we still hope for the best, we are prepared for the worst — and I think you have to have that mind-set when you’re starting something new.
All of these things saved us a bunch of time, energy, and stress, and made our moving process so much more enjoyable.
Have you recently moved or are you planning to move? What are YOUR tips and tricks for creating a stress-free, fun moving process?
Jennifer says
Whew! Quite the process! We’re moving in two months and we’ve already started sorting and packing up non-essentials. I think I’m a bit more disorganized than I’d like to be. One of the questions I have is about changing your address with all the websites, other sites that send great free stuff. When did you do that? Before you moved when you knew your address? How did you decide when to do it? Thanks.
Andrea says
Jennifer, good luck on your move — how exciting!
Yes, changing our address was quite a process, but we did it gradually because we only moved 5 miles down the road. The main thing we did was fill out the “change of address” form at the post office…and all of our mail has made it to our new address. We obviously had to contact all our utility companies, credit card companies, employers, insurance companies, and banks to change our address…but other than that, everything else has just been forwarded to our new address.
Let me know if you have other moving questions–I’ll do my best to answer them!
BeingJennifer says
Thanks Andrea,
It’s just been so long since we moved, that I’m hoping I remember to contact all the people and companies that I don’t deal with regularly. The change of address form will be my best friend. ;o)
Andrea says
Yes, the “change of address” form helped me a ton!
But I forgot to mention that since we moved 3 days before Christmas, we also plastered our new address all over our Christmas card and sent it to everyone we could think of. It was a great way to catch up with old friends, say “Merry Christmas”, and share our new address. {I’ll actually be talking about my Christmas cards in a couple of weeks so check back if you want to see what they looked like!}
Megan Camp says
Moving. Ugh. Yes, I am moving in less than a month to a different town, 5 hours away. My husband is gone at training for the next 4 weeks while I pack the house with a 2 month old and a 3 year old. What an adventure. I definitely can’t use the words “stress-free or fun” regarding our move. We actually don’t even have a location to move to yet…just a job, for which we are very thankful.
We patched and painted all the nail holes before my husband left and he helped pack as much as possible. I give myself small goals to accomplish and just slowly pack one box at a time as I am able. I label them as best I can (I don’t know how many rooms we’ll have or if we’ll have an office/extra room). I have started cleaning the master bath and will soon move everything out of it and clean it from top to bottom and then not use it again. Next, I’ll do the same with my infant son’s room since he doesn’t use his room at this time. Doing this to as many rooms as I’m able to will help the move process go easier at the end because there will be less cleaning to do the night after we load the truck as we’ll leave the morning after packing.