3 Things People Don't Consider When Moving Home (but Need To!)

Moving house is a pretty stressful logistical hurdle that most of us have to jump over from time to time. Luckily, that means that there are heaps of other people who have made all the mistakes there are to make before you, and by reading about their errors, you can – hopefully – avoid them. In that spirit, these are 3 things that you really need to consider when moving home.

Don’t underestimate the cost

Moving house is one of those things that people often oversimplify in their minds, especially when budgeting. It’s easy to think that all you’ll have to pay for is a delivery van from somewhere like Bright Movers, and that that’s about it.

The reality is a lot less pleasant. You’ll possibly have to factor in paying two rents for a few weeks or even months, lost earnings if you have to take time off work, and all the costs associated with packing materials and replacing the odd broken items.

Factor this in early on – it’s much better to have money left over than it is to find yourself panicking.

You have more stuff than you think

Everyone – even people who consider themselves complete minimalists – has a lot more possessions than they might initially think. This is typically the result of stuffing things into cabinets, drawers, under sofas and inside backpacks, which, over the years, means that you end up with a situation in which the vast majority of your possessions are out of sight, out of mind.

When you’re finally packing everything up and moving house, you realise just how dire the situation is. Practically, all you need to do is set aside a lot more time than you might have thought you needed to declutter and pack.

Starting a few weeks before you thought you needed to will only ever have a positive outcome; if you actually don’t have much stuff, great – you’re done early. If you do, then you have the time to sort through it in a relaxed manner.

Your memory isn’t perfect

Finally, people often think that they’ll just be able to remember everything that needs to be done and where they’ve put everything. Some are a bit more realistic, but many of us just assume that it’ll get done.

There may be some superhumans with incredible memory palaces that can achieve this, but the chances are that for the vast majority of us, there are simply too many things to keep in mind when organising a move to be successful without some extra help.

This doesn’t take long and will make things a lot simpler and more relaxing later on. For example, when you’re packing a box, write down the contents on the outside. When you realise that there’s something you need to book in on a certain date, set a reminder on your phone. This way, you can focus on the next issue, and put the simple things out of your mind.