The stress of moving homes

in Silver Bloggers3 years ago

Many say the three most stressful things on life are death of the love one, divorce and moving houses. The first two are a bit ironic, it stresses you out if they die, and it also stresses you out if the two of you split up, let's just hope no one has to go through both stresses.

Luckily for me I haven't had to go through either (yet). However I've moved around quite a bit during my lifetime including two international moves. My latest move was just yesterday, 20 December, just a few days before Christmas. I'll tell you more about that in another post. Anyway, despite moving a fair amount of times in the past, it still stresses me out.
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A week before M-day, I decided to get a head start and bought out a bunch of boxes that I had lying around at home. I figured that would help me get in a M-mode and start packing some stuff. Big mistake! Nearly everything I picked up I thought "I'm going to need that for ..." and put it back down again. I ended up with a messy living room for a week!
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By the evening of M-1 I was still only 70% there, and now I had a lot of half filled boxes, scattered around every room. I also had a grumpy husband because he had a snappy wife who told him off for not packing stuff properly 😂. Snappy wife was getting more and more stressed out as the night went by and she still had not finished packing. Plus the movers were due at 8am the next morning, a whole hour before her normal wake up time. Lack of beauty sleep makes a wife extra snagrumpy, not a good position for any husband to be in.
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M-day arrived and true to their word, the movers knocked on our door at 8am. Normally tradesmen are never on time. The only time you want them to turn up late, they arrive on time. The guys worked so swiftly that I barely had time to make myself the essential morning cup of tea. Within an hour they had cleared out everything in my flat and loaded it into their van.
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What a mess! You see why I was so stressed out packing now!!
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Anyway, I said a final goodbye to my flat, shut the door and threw the key back through the letter box. Next stop, to offload my stuff. That was the easy part as I didn't have to do anything now. The guys have their way of working the most efficient way even if it means they park their van in the middle of the road. Never mind the cars that want to get by!! Luckily this is a quiet residential road. They only had to move once to let a car through, and the other time I told the driver to drive around the block. Luckily she was ok with that.
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Finally after 7 hours, including nearly four hours of travelling, I finally moved all my stuff from point A to point B.
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You'd think I can settle down in my new place now? Far from it. The next month will be interesting/stressful as I'm not sure where I will staying most of the time. Not sure if I can handle nomading at this stage in my life. More on that in my next post.

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Moving house is really annoying, especially when it takes a week to fix the furniture..
Good luck in your new flat :)

I'm my case it's gonna take a month to get it in a liveable condition before I can do anything!!

 3 years ago  

I can just imagine how stressful it is moving house, and if there's no house yet, it must be even worse! Are you Airbnb'ing over Christmas while waiting to make the final move?
I have really been spoiled, have not moved home since the day I got married, and that was decades ago! Hubby moved into the brand new home a month before our wedding and I just came along with my trousseau!
Soooo...it's going to be really difficult for us to move as our roots are deeply planted in this old house.
Good luck with the final move, have a wonderful Christmas and a good 2022 in your new home @livinguktaiwan💞

I'm in a hotel at the moment Lizzie, coz that's a lot cheaper than an Airbnb but sadly doesn't have any cooking facilities, that's the only downside. Will be eating lots of takeaway, hopefully it won't work out more expensive than Airbnb in the end!!!

It's sounds like you really are rooted in your place, must hold lots of beautiful memories for you, plus now you have converted it into an BnB, taking your life to a new chapter, it must to so nice to experience so much with it.

Being a nomad gets more stressful each year, if you are anything like me, as you accumulate more and more and more.

I feel your pain. My last two moves have had the added stress of having to bring a fish tank on the move. The clock starts ticking when you plug it out as the water starts to cool. 😬

We bought a house though so thankfully... hopefully the last one was the last move for us for a while.

I still have boxes unpacked from the last move. No rush. I hope you labeled them 😁.

That must be really stressful taking care of the fish as well. I hope you didn't have to move 4 hours like me!!

Everytime I move, I throw away a lot of stuff and say I'm going to stay minimalistic, then somehow I seem to accumulate stuff again, seems to be a never ending cycle. Plus I got boxes stacked at my sister's place in UK, and others at my sister in law's place from nearly 20 years ago, and most of my stuff is in Taiwan now which I can't go back to, so it's getting a bit crazy, trying to piece my possession all back together....

Moving house is one of the most stressful and time-consuming things, I have moved about 10 times (so far). Of course, the furniture is not as much as you but it really takes energy 😂
Anyway, good luck to you with your new adventure 🙏

10 times!!! That's a lot!! You must got it down to an art by now!!

I always start off thinking I'm going to be ultra organised, but I always end up just throwing everything in the boxes in the hope I can just unpack things and my life will be back to normal again!!

I understand how that feels 😂 But I realize it's was part of my life and I have to deal with it. Hope you can enjoy your new place soon

We’ll be doing this soon, hopefully February. Our house is sold and we’ve got the new place lined up. I’m planning to write more about it in my blog after Christmas.

Good luck with the move. Hopefully everything will go through smoothly for you guys!!

I don't envy you at this moment. You're right about moving being suoer stressful. I'm dreading our next move.

It's crazy how fast movers are. You think it will take hours and then they are in and out in 20-30 minutes. That's a good thing though I suppose - other than them waking you up early.

Sounds like there is more to this story. I'll have to wait for the next post.

The most annoying thing is it happened just before Christmas and I couldn't drag it out till after the New Year, so it got a bit chaotic. But, yes the next month is going to be interesting.

You guys would have done international moves so you know what it's like. How long will you be in France for till you return back to Canada? That will surely be an interesting move if you spend a long time out of the country.

We are supposed to go back to Canada around this time next year. I'm not looking forward to that move at all.

I'm going to be moving soon and it is stressful for sure. Will be the 12th time I've moved around and will be throwing a lot of stuff away. Thankfully I'm mitigating the other stressful thing you mentioned by never getting married so won't ever have to deal with that 😂

Good luck with moving in, hope you settle in quickly

12!! 😮

You going to stay local or will it be quite far away? Not that it makes that much difference to be honest unless you can ferry your stuff over in car loads if it's local.

As to not getting married, maybe Mrs Havey just hasn't come into your life yet, never say never!!!😉

No I'm still going to be local. I think the pandemic made me realise what's important right now and moving to the other side of the world is not viable... at the moment anyway! Oh I have a new car as well, Gandalf the Grey I've called him - hopefully can fit all I need in a Corsa 😁

Haha, not yet, who knows what the future holds, maybe Mrs. Havey will be a keen traveler too!

 3 years ago  

Moving house can be really challenging and exhausting especially the packing and unpacking :) Hope you will get settled very soon to where you moved :)

Speaking of stress, we just got back home from an 8-day wake of my mom-in-law and the stress came home with us, lol!

I'm so sorry to hear about your mother in law. 8 days wake is a long time, is that customary in Philippines or village specific? Hopefully, you have recovered from the stress now.

 3 years ago  

Thank you, we are doing okay now. The husband and I are back to our own home so stress level is down :)

The wake should be 3-5days only but we waited for a member of the family to come home so it was stretched to 8 days.

Part of the stress comes from deciding what to keep and what to dump. Then also buying new furniture and big electrical items. For the purchase, we tried to buy a few months before and have them deliver on the same day. Now, with COVID-19, i am not sure that can be easy to achieve.

Covid really messes things up, you just can't plan deliveries and stuff nowadays, so have to build in extra contingency to make sure you're covered. It's really a pain.

Yes, We purchased a sofa for my inlaws which didn't come and had to cancel and go and shop again and buy from another place.

I feel sorry for your knees with all the curation you do on that small table.

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ha ha!!! That's actually our TV, coz we don't have a proper one

This is how I roll now

Somehow it looks worse. xD

Wow, best of luck with that! I hate moving too. Unfortunately, I think we have about two more in store for our future. We will see. The second time I ever moved, it was two houses down from the first place, so we just walked all my stuff down the sidewalk. It was pretty funny!

Two houses down the road is great, makes life a lot easier!!! You can do it bit by bit, and save on the removal firm cost.

Two more moves isn't that bad, especially if you grow your family and move to a bigger place, all part of life changing events which is a nice thing. Looks like you guys got it all planned out already

if you grow your family and move to a bigger place

If anything we will be downsizing! I get you though! I'd like to move somewhere near the water eventually!

It gets better with practise. I have moved about 40 times over the past 10 years but most of those "moves" included just one backpack :) Hope you will like your new home.

@tipu curate

I wish I can live out of a backpack, life would be a lot simpler. Is the 40 times coz you been travelling around a lot? Do you think you'll start travelling so much again when things open up?

Yeah, it´s been because of my nomadic lifestyle. The kind of moving that you are currently dealing with, with a lot of stuff to move and things to take care of, is something I experienced just about 5 times when I was still living with my parents. Since I became a minimalist nomad, moving from one place to another has been very easy. Even when moving to different countries. You just grab your backpack and go :) But this lifestyle is not for everyone of course. Some people need a lot of stuff around to feel comfortable.

Hey there's a festival today which I forgotten the name of it. So, Happy Colourful Balls soup day!!!

Thank you for all your advice. I've learnt alot from you. Thank you for your mentorship.

Where and why did you move this time? Snagrumpy sounds like an extra special grumpy. Hope you are settled in for Christmas day at least xx

Moving is fine for me coz I've trained to live in a suitcase.

Actually I started off living out of a suitcase two years ago when I came back to UK from Taiwan, but it seems to have snowballed!!!!

I like the new word "snagrumpy" 😁 Was it a typo or do we have a new awesome term!? I like the latter...

Is point B your new place or temp storage for now while you wait for the new place?

That's my sister's place, brother in law is in the process of renovating but not done yet, so I can't move it. And it's not like I can give him a deadline to move in as they're doing me a favour by letting me stay there..

I know what it means. :) We've moved two times in the last three years and we'll have to move again sooner rather than later as a two-room apartment (despite it being pretty big) is not enough for a family with a 1yr 9month old child and a small home business. :D The same old thing again... However, I have to say that I like changing places from time to time. :)

I like a change of scenery as well, even for the few years when we were in the same place, I like to move the furniture around a little to give it a different feel.

Sounds like you do need a bigger place with a child coming up to 2 years and a home business. Plus I guess you'd want to make sure you're in a good location for schools for your child? Does Lithuania have the same madness about being in the right location for all the good schools?

Moving is always stressful. Especially now, during Christmas, it's doubly difficult. I'm glad that I have finished moving of my company before the New Year. For me, this process also became stressful and difficult. But Office Movers has made this much easier. The main thing for me is that I didn't have to pack and unpack all these things and equipment. I think that the help of experts is a must when moving.

Oh boy... the madness begins for you matey. Settling in is always a long painful ordeal. Doing a move right before Christmas is doubly difficult. Hope it goes well and sending a massive Merry Christmas. Hopefully the move doesn't take away from the holiday joy. :)

Thanks @mudcat36, buyer pulled the same old trick, threaten to pull out if we didn't complete before Christmas 🙄

Merry Christmas to you!!

@livinguktaiwan I could remember when I relocated from my school in Niger State University to Ile Ife Osun State Nigeria. The whole packing was a stressful one because I had to board a bus for all my loggage, then enter Ferry ⛴️ for one hour then continued with the journey by road. The whole journey took me 14 hours before I got to my destination. It was really Hell for for. That was my own experience so far.

The second experience I had was also when I got married. I had to leave my parents house and travel 4 hours to where I am presently. The packing of my loggage was not a joke. I sent some already ahead of me. Then I got there looking like a big stranger 😭😭.

If you have the budget, it’s highly recommended that you hire a reputed professional moving company. They will relieve you of the potential heavy lifting like furniture, home appliances, etc.
Plus, professionals will pack your belongings in such a way that it’ll negate the possibility of any damage to your items.