Every year, tens of millions of Americans move. Some may take the suggestions on the UMoveFree site to find the perfect apartment, while others will scour their chosen city for the right home. However and wherever you move, it is a process that often takes a lot of time and effort, which ultimately leads to a lot of stress.

However, your moves aren’t doomed to be stressful and long forever. There are some things you can do to make your move faster and streamlined, while also cutting down a lot of the stress. Keep reading to discover a few things that will help take the stress out of moving to a new home.

Declutter Beforehand

One of the best tips to make your move much easier is to declutter your space beforehand. This makes it much easier to move through and can ensure you get things packed up much more efficiently. If you have junk everywhere, trying to go through it all while packing can be an absolute nightmare.

A great way to do this while decluttering is to split all of your belongings into three piles. One will be the stuff you want to keep, one will be the things you will try and sell, and the last will be things that can be donated or thrown out.

This gives you less to move, and also makes it easier to separate things into the right boxes, to make the eventual move into your new home much more streamlined, too.

Have a Plan

One thing that often leads to people spending more time on a move and suffering from more stress is doing things without a plan. Having a plan of attack for your move can ensure you know all that you need to do, and what order makes the most sense to do it in.

A good place to start is by creating a moving checklist. These can include a list of what to move and can make sure you do things like hire movers, get your locks changed, and various other things that get missed. This will not only ensure everything is packed but will make sure that no part of the moving process is missed.

In addition to this, make sure you have a plan for how you are going to move everything, when it will happen, who will take what, and even in which order things should be moved. Sure, making this plan can take a bit of time, but it is well worth it to have a much smoother move with fewer surprises along the way. This is especially important for long-distance moves.

Deal With Utilities Ahead of Time

One of the most important parts of moving is transferring over your utilities like power, water, and energy. Despite this importance, updating addresses is often something that people forget to do until the last minute.

People are often so concerned with packing things, hiring movers, and doing things like that, that they forget to call to get their utility hookups and/or transfers set up. In addition to your standard utilities, don’t forget about changing your address with the government, the IRS, Amazon, and several others.

The earlier you do this, the less you have to worry about them as your move gets closer and the pressure levels rise. If you forget about it, you may have to live a few days without things like the internet, and this can add a ton of unnecessary stress into your life.

Moving can be a stressful and long process, but we hope these tips can help make the process a little more streamlined and easy to handle.