How to Minimize the Stress of Moving

Regardless of whether it's across the country or across town, moving is a stressful, expensive and time-consuming event. It requires extensive planning, organization, and a lot of physical activity. While there is no easy way to move house, there are several things you can do to simplify the process and reduce the amount of stress on yourself.

First things first: identify a target moving date. You'll want to take a variety of factors into consideration when determining your moving timeframe, such as work schedules if you're changing employment, school schedules for your kids, housing considerations such as rent or lease terms, and even the weather. A good rule of thumb is to give yourself a two-to-three week window to complete your entire move, from packing and cleaning your current residence, to moving itself, to unpacking and organizing in your new home.

Summer is always a peak moving time—particularly for families, as it provides for minimal interruption in kids' school schedules—but it’s also typically the hottest and least physically comfortable time of year to be doing all that heavy lifting. While unpleasant, blistering heat is not likely to be a deal breaker, but it is worth taking into consideration (scheduling your move for late May as opposed to mid-July, for example, could make a significant difference).

Once you’ve worked out a timeframe for your move, it's time to take inventory of your home. The most important part of this process is identifying what to keep, and what to get rid of before the move—there is no sense in moving items you don't plan on keeping long-term. A good way to determine what to keep and what to lose is to divide your household into three categories: 'Must Keep,' 'May Keep,' and 'Don't Need.' Once you’ve gotten rid of the 'Don't Need' items, go back through the 'May Keep' piles and eliminate everything you can.

If you're having trouble knowing when to let go of something, apply the six-month test: If it hasn't been used in the past six-months, you don’t need it (the exception here, of course, would be season items like winter coats, box fans, etc., that aren't intended for use year-round). Tip: Don’t automatically throw things you no longer need away—there are plenty of charity organizations that are constantly accepting donations of all kinds to help others in the community, and they would be happy to have your unwanted items. Plus, you can write off the donations for a nice tax break next April.

Now that your household is organized and you've done a thorough inventory of everything that will be making the move with you, it's time to start thinking about the logistics of actually moving it all. The easiest way to do it (but also the most expensive) is to hire a full-service moving company (*Note: Be sure to shop around for the best rate, and check out customer reviews online to make sure you choose a reputable company that won’t rip you off). They’ll come to your house, pack everything up, ship it off for you, and unpack at your new home. The next option—a bit more time consuming and work-intensive on your part, but certainly less expensive—is to pack and unpack yourself, but hire movers for the heavy lifting and physical transportation part of the process. All you have to pay for is the time they spend physically moving your possessions.

A third option would be to rent a truck and pack, lift and move everything yourself. There are plenty of truck rental services designed just for these kinds of projects, and their rates are typically very reasonable (although rising gas prices may make this option slightly less appealing). Finally, if you're determined to spend as little as possible, get a group of kind-hearted friends—and their cars—together and make moving a group activity. You can typically get away with a small payment to each helper, or the cost of dinner for the group. This is certainly the most labor-intensive option, but it won't cost you much at all.

Once you've chosen the right moving method for you, get everything planned out and scheduled at least 4-6 weeks in advance. Also, it's a good idea to begin the organization and overall move-out process as early as possible, so as to avoid having to cram it all—packing, cleaning, moving—into a few days or a weekend. Hit your local grocery or wholesale store to pick up empty boxes for free and pack up seasonal items and other things you don't use on a daily basis early on—fancy china, extra bedding, etc. While prolonging the moving process isn't exactly fun, spacing the massive task out will significantly reduce your stress level and help you feel more relaxed, prepared and in control of the process.

No matter how well you prepare, moving is always at least somewhat stressful, so do what you can to reduce that stress ahead of time, breathe deeply, and remember: it will be over before you know it.

Ki provides information on Austin real estate for buyers and sellers investigating the Austin market. His site has a search of the Austin MLS and information on Austin area neighborhoods.

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Kitchen Organization Help for Your Worst Problems

Is your kitchen a constant mess? Does no one in your home clean up after themselves or put things back where they belong? Here are some quick and easy tips to make sure that kitchen organization is part of everyone’s routine in your home.

The kitchen is one of the places in the home that is most used and because of that also one of the most abused places. Because it serves as meal-making central, it is vital that this area of the home stays clean and organized. A day or two of chaos here can mean hours of cleaning and organizing time. Here are a few ideas to help you get the worst of your kitchen organization problems under control.

I know that a problem in my own kitchen is making sure that everyone cleans up after themselves. To help with this, we have a house rule: If you make a mess in the kitchen, you clean it up. This applies to food-related messes as well as other messes in the kitchen. So if you bring a stack of schoolwork or mail into the kitchen in order to do homework or pay bills, make sure that you bring it back out of the kitchen as well. In order for your kitchen organization to go smoothly, you will also need to make sure that cleaning up counters and putting dishes in the dishwasher is part of this rule.

But as is the case with any house rule, making it is never the problem, enforcing it is. An appropriate consequence for not following the rule could be that whoever does not follow the rule gets stuck on kitchen cleanup duty for a week. To help make sure that everyone knows what the rule is, post it on a brightly colored piece of paper in the kitchen and make sure that you clearly define what defines a mess and what appropriate cleanup is in your house. In order for kitchen organization and cleanup to be part of your house rules, clean needs to be defined clearly and consequences for not following the rule need to be in place.

Make sure that everything has a place in your kitchen and that everyone in your house knows where that place is. If things do not have a specific place in your kitchen, it is going to be hard to get anyone in your home to put things away. Part of this means making sure that similar things “live” together in your kitchen.

My one caution in this is that different people have different definitions of what “like” things are. If you are the one who has done the initial kitchen organization job, make sure that everyone in your house is clear on what your definition of “like” things is. So if you have organized all of your daily use items together, make sure that everyone in your home knows that and knows where those items are. If you have organized all of the cups and mugs in one area, make sure that everyone in your home knows where those items are.

As with many things in life, making sure that kitchen organization is part of everyone’s routine in your home is about communication. You need to make sure that you appropriately communicate your expectations of what a clean and organized kitchen looks like. For more ideas to get your kitchen organized, go to http://www.yourhomeisorganized.com/KitchenOrganization.htm

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