Ways to Manage Your Stress During Your Move

Moving can be an incredibly stressful experience. The process of moving could itself be a full-time job, but most of us also have to juggle our jobs, family life, and daily responsibilities.

While moving may never be without stress, there are ways to manage your stress during the moving process. Here are some practical tips to lower your stress and anxiety about moving.

1. Prioritize Your Basic Needs

Moving is usually like running a marathon and not a sprint: it’s a long road, and you need lots of energy to cross the finish line. Although it may be tempting, you mustn’t bypass your basic needs for health and sanity.

• Get enough sleep: It’s easy to doomscroll before bed to ease your stress, but this will only disrupt your sleep. Instead, intentionally plan for good sleep. Reduce screen time before bed, get relaxed, and turn out the lights at a decent time. Remember, adults still need between 7-9 hours of sleep at night!
• Eat healthy foods: Our natural inclination when stressed is to binge on comfort foods. However, these will only make you more unmotivated and sluggish. Choose healthy foods to keep your mind clear and focused, your energy up, and ward off sickness that can sometimes happen with stress.
• Exercise: Although packing boxes can be a workout, take time away to move your body in a de-stressing way. For some people, this is a morning or evening stroll. For some people, it’s lifting weights or going for a run. Just be sure not to overdo it–an injury will make moving all the more painful, literally!
• Take breaks: Schedule time for enjoyable activities so you can recharge and be ready for more packing.

Implementing these strategies to meet your basic health needs is the best way to sustain yourself during this stressful season.

2. Organize Your Time and Tasks

One of the most stressful parts of moving is remembering the hundreds of small tasks you need to accomplish. The best way to manage this form of stress is to write it all down. It’s really as simple as that!

Do a “brain dump” onto paper–write out literally everything you have to do before moving. It doesn’t have to be in order, and don’t get stressed about remembering everything–you can always add to the list later. Just get it all in front of you on paper.

Next, arrange the items roughly in order. For instance, although your walls may be in desperate need of paint, you should probably declutter and clean before you put on a fresh coat of paint. If possible, note how long a project might take. This will prepare you for the next step.

Buy or print a simple calendar and copy your to-do list onto the daily boxes from now until your moving date. Highlight anything important, like deadlines. Use your notes on project time to determine how to fit the project into your schedule. By the end of this task, you should have a master calendar that accounts for all your tasks and when you will accomplish them.

This should feel incredibly freeing and significantly lower your anxiety because you no longer have to remember everything and schedule it out in your head. Everything is accounted for, and you have a plan to accomplish it!

Stay On Task

Perhaps the harder task is to stay organized by completing the tasks you’ve assigned for each day. While this might feel stressful in the moment–who wouldn’t rather sit and watch TV instead of pack up a closet?– in the long run, it’s the less stressful choice. By procrastinating on necessary tasks, you’re only adding to your plate later. Doing this repeatedly will increase the stress of future days, and you may not get everything done by moving day. By sticking with your plan, you only have to be responsible for the tasks of today–not yesterday’s tasks, and not tomorrow’s. Little by little, it will all get done, and that calms anxiety!

Hire Professional Help

Especially if you already have a lot on your plate, budget for hiring professionals to do time-consuming tasks. Things like painting, power washing, landscaping, and packing are all tasks that can be handled by a professional and significantly reduce your stress.

Peavlor Moving & Storage Can Help!

While we can’t help with the preparation, listing, and selling of your home, Peavler Moving & Storage can help you with the next important step–relocation! Our skilled team can manage your whole relocation from start to finish, and even store your possessions in one of our quality storage facilities. Contact us today to get started!