Stress is something that, originally, was helpful. Our ancestors would use the jolt of adrenaline it gives to survive dangerous situations or to quickly run away from wild animals or competitors for food.
Nowadays, fortunately, our sources of stress are much less life-threatening. Unfortunately, this always means stress itself is a lot less helpful. This doesn’t mean stressful situations are less numerous though - from work and traffic to childcare and financial issues, stress is a cornerstone of modern life.
Stress can have a serious effect on our health, and can even cause many life-threatening conditions - meaning that rather than being an effective way to avoid danger like it once was, stress now is itself a form of danger for many of us.
Stress While Moving Home
While most of us are used to dealing with a specific amount of stress in our daily or weekly routines, large important tasks such as moving house can dramatically increase our stress in a short time, leading to short tempers, exhaustion, and the potential of damaged possessions and health issues, among other problems.
From the financial cost of moving, to the practical planning of the task itself, to the likely physical tiredness at the end of each day, moving house is often reported to be one of the most stressful experiences in people’s lives.
It’s important to remember that perception plays a massive role in this, and if you know that you have things planned out properly and are aware of exactly what you need to do, the stress levels will likely drop significantly.
With that, here are some crucial tips for avoiding stress coming moving day:
Communicate properly
We all know that talking about what worries us is a positive thing and helps reduce stress and anxiety. However, this is, even more, the case than normal for moving, since talking through every possession that needs to be moved, and every eventuality that could occur, helps to avoid the unexpected and make the whole process move more smoothly.
It can be tempting to stay in your own head the whole time and only worry about your own personal possessions, leaving other family members to handle their own - but this is likely to lead to things being missed, and you being stuck handling stressful situations or heavy items without help. Going through everything first, and ensuring the right people are assigned to each task, will save time and stress for everybody.
Plan & Start Early
When an upcoming task seems overwhelming, it can be very tempting to ignore it and put it off, allowing us to enjoy our relaxation a little bit longer. However, this will only cause more stress when the time comes. There is no avoiding it - moving house takes a lot of time and hard work. Even just packing things up is likely to take more than one day.
The key, as briefly touched on already, is to plan each step in advance, breaking large tasks down into individual steps, or focusing on one room at a time. This prevents you from getting overwhelmed and ensures each thing is entirely finished before you move on.
Of course, the earlier you start on this, the better. You will find that once you know the plan, you can start to pack things up even a few days or weeks before move day, reducing the amount that has to be done when the time comes around. You can even start putting aside important documents and things that will cause additional stress if lost closer to moving day.
Taking small steps towards what needs to be achieved each day ensures you keep progressing without panic or stress and ensures that moving day itself is a simple case of following the remaining steps.
Don’t forget about you!
When working through a move, it’s easy to focus on it for the entire day, or an entire week. You will likely take time out for things you absolutely need to, such as work or family commitments. But what about you?
It could be something as simple as going for a walk or grabbing a coffee with a friend. It could even be just having a lie-in in the morning!
The point is, that focusing on the task for every waking hour is going to drain you, increase stress, and add emotion into the mix. By taking time to care for your own health and sense of happiness, you can remain fresh and happy. This doesn’t just help you by letting you attack the task again while feeling refreshed and motivated, but it helps others too by ensuring you don’t get grumpier and less helpful throughout the day.
Consider getting professional help!
For many people, following the above steps and planning things properly will make moving day stress-free. But for others, moving will be extremely stressful even when following all of these steps to the letter. Maybe you have to supervise children and pets the entire time or are unable to get time off work. Maybe you are just more susceptible to stress than others.
For people like this, hiring help such as a professional crate rental company can be a lifesaver, essentially removing all of the stress from the day.
phs TeaCrate is the UK’s leading supplier of hire removal crates. Our staff are also available to pack your crates, move your items, and unpack them from the vehicle at the other end - ensuring your possessions are safe, digitally tracked, and get where they need to be with no additional work from yourselves. This isn’t just for moving house either - we offer specialist industrial removal services for the pharmaceutical industry, retail and more.
We provide an industry-leading service with our experienced sales, account management and customer support teams providing expert knowledge and advice with customer satisfaction scoring of 99%+.
We help our customers find the right crate and size for their specific requirements and then deliver on time, every time, with the next working day delivery as standard.
We’re in every geographical area and because we’re next door, everywhere, we are on hand to help wherever you are. With over 100 operational staff and a fleet of 29 vehicles, next working day delivery is available on all stocked items through our national network of depots, conveniently located throughout the UK, which also cater for customer collections at all locations.
To learn more contact us now to discuss your requirements!