The Trickiest Things To Deal With When Moving Home

Moving house is a big step in life. When you first moved out of your parents’ home, and you were on your own in the big wide world for the first time, you probably felt an equal mix of excitement and trepidation. Staying up all day and sleeping all night, going out when you wanted, eating and drinking whatever and whenever you needed to, You were ready to move into your very own place, maybe with a roommate or two, and all in all you had a good time. 

But now, you’ve got a family to look after, a career to boost, and a home to keep all safe and happy and tidy. And that makes having to move house a lot more stressful than it ever was before! You’ve got a lot more inventory to keep track of this time around, and considering you’re more likely to be buying instead of renting at this point, you’ve got a lot more admin to do as well. If you’re not ready to take on the challenge of finding and keeping a buyer, or doing your mortgage research, this is going to be one of the hardest points of your life!

So with that idea in mind, let’s think about what’s the trickiest to deal with when you’re moving home. After all, you want to prepare yourself accordingly. 

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Deciding on the Mortgage

If you’re out to buy a home, or any kind of real estate, there’s a good chance you need a mortgage. Indeed, about 70% of American homeowners have a mortgage still on their credit score, and only the other 30% (give or take) have managed to pay theirs off already. You can immediately see that the financial odds are stacked against you, but you wouldn’t take out a mortgage unless you were completely ready to move on up and own your own home. Therefore, it’d be a waste of time to worry about this prospect in the here and now!

But if you’re ready to get on with buying some property of your own, you need to know you’re getting the right mortgage, using the right lender who is both quite lenient and has a good reputation, and will offer you a good amount of time to keep up with your payments. After all, finding an arm loan is a big deal, and it’s one you should take your own time with - you need to know what you can afford, you need to get a mortgage deal in the bag before you try to buy a home, and you need to know if you can have more than one person on the policy you’ve chosen if you’re moving in jointly with someone else. 

Make sure you do plenty of research in the here and now, and at least know the type of mortgage that’s going to be most beneficial to your plans. 

Packing Correctly (and then unpacking correctly!)

Packing is something we all worry about, at the end of the day. No matter if you’re going away on vacation for a few days, or you’re moving your entire household from one end of the country to the other, you need to know you’ve packed correctly. And once you’ve arrived at your destination, you need to know you can unpack easily, with a simple system on hand to help you out. 

You’ll need to have a good moving company on hand, who understand what kind of care needs to be taken during transit, and listen to your needs. So start with a sharpie pen, or a similar marker, to label the boxes you’ve bought and intend to pack all your things away in. Use color coding if need be - red for the kitchen, blue for the living room, green for your son’s bedroom etc. Even if people don’t read the word on the front, they’ll notice the color in their rush to get everything out of the moving van and immediately head to the right room. 

When it comes to fragile objects, make sure you wrap up everything with some bubble wrap, and then put some protective paper padding inside the box as well. Make sure only you or your partner are taking these boxes inside the house, to prevent tripping or falling or running into each other, which kids are far more likely to do! 

Discovering the Neighborhood and the Neighbors

You’re moving to a new area you’ve probably never even visited before, maybe for work purposes. Or maybe you visited this new area on vacation once or twice when you were younger, but now you can’t remember much of your childhood trips. Either way, you need to get to know the place and the kind of people who live in it, to determine if you’ll get along, and if you’ll get plenty of peace and quiet throughout the day and at night. 

But you don’t know your neighbors’ schedules, you have no idea where the nearest convenience store is, and the only point of reference you have is the local school. What do you do? You explore! Be sure to knock on the doors of the people who live either side of you and introduce yourself, as you’re going to want to make friends with the people partly privy to what goes on in your walls. Always be friendly and civil with them, at the least - if you do, you even get another layer of protection when you’re away from the home. Then get the car out and drive around for a good hour or so, getting to know where the local haunts and the town are. 

How Do You Feel About Moving Home? 

Moving home is always going to be a tricky point in your life, and you’re going to have say some kind of goodbye each time you move up and on. So be sure you’re always aware of what the trickiest things to deal with are going to be, so you can prepare properly for them.