Moving is a life change that can cause a great deal of stress – especially if you’re in the process of buying and selling rather than simply renting. In this case, not only do you have to worry about the physical moving element, but you’re likely also very concerned about the money that you’re spending on solicitor and estate agent fees.
While it’s easy to spiral where stress like this is concerned, it’s important to understand that there are more practical steps for getting through it – and that alone can be large enough of a comfort to make a change.
The Old Trappings
It can often feel as though the way in which houses are bought and sold doesn’t make much sense at all. Having to wait until you’ve sold your house before you can look to buy one puts a timer on the whole process, and also creates a situation where you might feel pressured to settle for a home that you don’t really want – even when this is an enormously expensive procedure. That’s even before you get into the whole world of chains and how someone dropping out at any stage can have ramifications for your own move – even to the point where it all falls through completely.
Completely understanding the bigger picture can be helpful here, however, because it also enables you to see solutions that you might not have before. If you do decide to sell your house before you buy, does that really have to be as limiting as you might think it is? Alternatively, you might come to understand that you also have the ability to buy first, which comes with its own pros and cons, but knowing that you have options can lend the whole process to a much greater feeling of being under your control.
Overlap
Part of the difficulty with moving is that there’s often a giant question mark over the entire thing. You might have had one experience that’s been better than another, and even if you can point to exactly why that was the case, you might not be able to recreate those circumstances when it comes time to move again.
For example, if you’re moving between homes in the same general area, creating a period of overlap for the two homes can be invaluable. In this situation, you don’t need to hire out a storage unit or anything similar for you to store things in; you can just directly transfer everything that you own. This also means that you’re able to spread the moving process itself out over a longer period of time, potentially reducing the amount of stress that you experience compared to if you just brute-forced it in a day or two. Of course, this is a situation that is highly dependent on a number of factors. Not only do you have to have the dates line up in the right way, but you also need the properties to be somewhat close to each other – otherwise the idea of going back and forth between them to drop off items becomes completely unrealistic.
Lack of Disruption to Your Lifestyle
In the final days of the move (a variable period of time that can go on for weeks), it’s easy for your lifestyle to fall into disarray as you don’t really have a ‘complete’ home to live in. Even if you do have access to your new property, it might not be set up in a way that makes it easy to live in – meanwhile, you’re going to be in the process of transferring everything you own out of your current place.
This is, largely, something that you can just put up with. However, when it comes to the meals that you eat, you might find that the lack of utensils can lead to a situation where you’re having to compromise on your health and finances. A meal out or a takeaway can be a neat solution for a night or two, but resorting to it again and again will begin to take a severe toll on your health and your finances.
That means that it’s worth making yourself aware ahead of time of some recipes that are incredibly simple to prepare – not only in terms of the amount of ingredients that they require but also when it comes to which kinds of utensils you need for it. That means that even when most of your belongings are out the door, you’re still able to eat properly.
