You may not be as obsessed as I am with the television show RuPaul’s Drag Race, but Season Six of the series finished a few months ago and the winner that was crowned was a drag queen based in New York City called Bianca Del Rio. Bianca is a comedy queen, full of wisecracks and one-liners, but also fiercely competitive. When any of the other contestants was complaining or moaning, Bianca’s retort would always be “Need help packing?”as she endeavoured to send them home one by one. I’ve always thought that this would be great slogan for a removals firm. “Need help packing? Then let us do it all for you.” While I am certainly not offering to come over and help you jam your entire life into a few boxes, I can offer you a few words of advice on how to make moving home as stress free as possible.
What to do two weeks before you move
This is when you need to think about utilities. Closing accounts on your old home and setting up accounts for your new home. Most utilities companies have got this down to a fine art. Telephone companies seem to be the ones where you sometimes run into problems though – make sure that you have allowed plenty of time to get your phone line and internet connection all set up on the new property. It is always a disaster if you are sitting in your new home and unable to post Facebook updates about how excited you are to be unpacking boxes.
What to do one week before you move
This is the best time to get ruthless. If you are using one of those removals companies that just comes in and packs up everything for you, then it is really tempting just to let them take everything from your old house and load it into your new house. But this would be a mistake. Moving home is a unique opportunity for you to shed anything that you no longer need, you need to have a real clean out and only take with you those things that are part of your future and leave behind everything that is a discarded remnant of you r past. Have a garage sale, donate old clothes to the homeless, whatever you do don’t try and pretend that you’ll sort it out when you get to the new house. You won’t. Also don’t forget to have your mail redirected – that’s important.
What to do on the day that you move
Stay calm. That is the most important thing. If the removals van is late – stay calm. If something gets broken – stay calm. If the friends that had promised to help cancel at the last minute – stay calm. You’re not going to solve anything by panicking or getting emotional. Fill your hip flask full of brandy, and stay calm.
What to do after you move
Try to say hello to the neighbours. Some neighbourhoods aren’t really big on talking to each other, or saying hello, or acknowledging that you exist, but you’ll find it surprisingly handy if you do know your neighbours. One of the best ways to settle in to your new home is to quickly build some routines – find out where you’re going to buy milk from, work out where you’re going to pick up the paper, time yourself on how long it takes to get to the nearest Chinese takeaway. This place will start to feel like home in no time.
Everyone says that moving home is one of the most stressful things you can do in your life. That is absolutely true. There’s no point trying to fight it – but try and take just a few small steps that will make a little bit less stressful and a little bit more bearable.