Moving into a new apartment can be a seriously perplexing emotional catch 22. At first, the joy you feel from locking down a new place to crash is one of the best feelings in the world. But as soon as the ink dries on your new contract, your brain goes into overdrive thinking about all of the things that you will have to take care of as you shift your life in a major way. This can be double for anxious people, like yours truly, who seem to blow every little thing out of proportion. Here are four things you can do to help relieve some stress between now and when you move.
4 Easy ways to relieve stress while moving
Moving can be the worst. But it doesn’t have to be. Photo: iStock
Transfer your accounts early
Transferring accounts like your electric, gas, and cable bills are usually an afterthought when you think about moving into a new apartment. But, by setting up your new accounts in your new place early on, you will avoid that four-hour back on-hold phone call with your cable provider in the last week of your move. That’s some stress no one needs, whether you are moving or not. So in this case, it’s better to rip that bandaid off earlier into the process.
Make a check-list and assign daily chores
Okay, so you’ve just signed a lease on a new apartment and the move in date is just under a month away. While you are still riding high from the prospect of a new place, you’ve just walked into your old one to see the mess you have been living with over the past few years or so. So where do you begin?
One thing that you can do in the early stages of your move in order to reduce stress is to make a checklist for all of the daily tasks throughout the month to accomplish before the big day. You can do this just for yourself or divvy out different chores amongst your roommates. That way, you can hold yourself accountable by knocking out small things every day to get you closer to the finish line without having to rush on the night before you ship out.
Plus, if you keep to the schedule you have created, you can clock out after your daily chores are completed. Giving you time to relax and save the rest of your packing for the next day.
Get out of the mess and get some exercise!
Sometimes the piles of boxes and seemingly endless amounts of dishes and silverware that you need to wrap in crumpled newspaper are just too much for your fragile psyche to digest. Going for a long walk or to the gym to increase your endorphins will get your stress down from threat level: midnight and allow you to focus on what productive things you can focus on rather than what could possibly go wrong.
Make sure to over prepare
As the old saying goes, it’s better to be safe than sorry. For the sake of not over-extending yourself or even taking that extra trip to the UPS store to load up on extra banker boxes and packing tape, it’s easy to convince yourself that you have properly stocked up on all of the supplies you will need in order to have a stress-free move. But, as anyone who has ever moved can attest, the amount clutter you have accumulated in your current home or apartment will surprise you.
That’s why it’s better to load up on more packing supplies than you could ever hope for so that each little nick-nack that you can’t bear to throw away gets a safe spot in the U-Haul. Plus, by having enough boxes, organizing your belongings while keeping them out of sight will help to decrease your stress levels in the last few days before your move.
