We all know that moving house is extremely stressful, some say worse than being made redundant or getting divorced yet the housing market in the UK is currently being revitalised after a long recession and houses are selling much more quickly. Two houses in my road recently sold within a few days so maybe people who have been putting off moving for the last few years are taking the plunge now the recession is over. Who knows?

 

So if you are planning moving soon you might be thinking about how you can make it less stressful. My top tip is to get a professional removal company in. Those guys move furniture and boxes for a living so will do it much quicker than you ever could and more professionally so are less likely to damage anything. If you have seen how they manoeuvre large pieces of furniture up or down stairs you just know they are worth the money. If you are on a tight budget then do the packing of the boxes yourself and do shop around for removal quotes as they can vary enormously.

 

So I do recommend a removals company but there is one area where the cost can sky rocket if you are not careful. When I moved last year I was advised to have half the house packed up the day before and kept at the removal company’s premises overnight and the second half loaded on the moving day. This seemed sensible as there was a lot of stuff to move (too much to do in one day) – it was a fairly big 4-bed house that we had lived in for 20 years so, you can imagine, we had accumulated plenty of stuff. The trouble with this was that it effectively cost us double the typical removal costs because we had the vans and crew with us for 2 days, but we didn’t think we had any other option at the time.

 

Only later did I realise that if I had put half our belongings in storage for a week or even a month I could have saved several hundreds of pounds and relieved some of the stress of the move.

 

Using a self storage unit can make moving from a large house a lot easier; you can pack up the non-essentials in advance and transport them to a storage facility convenient to your new home. Self storage companies like storing.com will even come and collect. But overall the cost of a short term rental of a storage unit is significantly less than the cost of a removals van and crew for 2 days.

 

All those complicated timing issues that happen on moving day can also be avoided by using self storage as a temporary holding place, allowing you to move some of your stuff at your own pace. You can start storing as soon as you have a definite moving date, which usually gives you around 3 weeks’ notice so no last minute panics.

 

Once you are settled in your new home you can take your time collecting all your other items from the self storage unit without any extra stress. It can also help you filter out some of the items you don’t want or need any more, especially as you have only stored the non-essentials. It is a great opportunity to de-clutter if you haven’t had the time or the inclination to do so before you left your old house.