Moving home to a different place is a huge source of anxiety, panic, and exhausting activities that never seem to end. Moving your household to another part of the town is stressful enough, not to mention interstate moves, where odds increase for your items to get damaged, misplaced, and spoiled in bad weather, or you to face extra costs due to delays and professional movers’ incompetence. With so many things to take care of, there are many opportunities for something to go wrong. Here’s a list of common problems you may encounter and ways to avoid them.
Having no place to stay
Don’t start a relocation process unless you have arranged your family lodgings until the new home is ready for you to move in. Failing to find a home for a few days leaves you with the additional stress of not knowing where to stay once your items reach the destination. A hotel might be a solution but, then you’re in a hurry to get down with the move to avoid paying for hotel rooms. Hurrying things up inevitably leads to mistakes, and you might do something otherwise if you had your plan worked out. Visit your new locality beforehand and book suitable lodgings for your family so you can oversee the move without thinking how much a room costs for every day of delay.
Image source: shutterstock/Andrey Popov
Hiring undependable movers
While some problems may stem from your inexperience or negligence, there are also some external ones you can’t directly control. You hire the realtor and the movers hoping to get a professional service, and yet some of them are looking to make quick money off their clients, either disappearing with your deposit or change the arrangements so you’re forced to play by their rules. While this scenario isn’t your fault, you can avoid it with a bit of research. When looking up moving services in your area, make sure to read their customer reviews. Check out their social media profiles and feedback telling whether common people like you were happy with dealing with them. Seeing how they deal with their customer queries and complaints can help you decide which companies are honest and which ones to avoid.
Damaged or lost property
Negligence during transport and insufficient protection are among the main concerns by people looking to move their furniture and property. Apart from getting broken, crushed, bent, or squashed, items are sometimes misplaced or even stolen. To prevent this from happening, try to find a packing and moving service that reassures to handle your items with care. One way to make sure your items are safe is to choose shipping container transport, as an upgrade from s simple truck service. The shipping company will deliver an empty 20’ or 40’ shipping container to your address, together with packing blankets and ties for securing your goods. These moving containers are modified with tie rails and points so your goods can be secured and protected during transit. Another perk of choosing a shipping container is the flexibility of transport as you can arrange it to be hauled by either road or railway.
Lack of scheduling
Overwhelmed with their own schedules, many homeowners only contact a moving company a day or two before the scheduled moving date. Not only does this cause immense stress and pressure of getting everything done at the last minute, but there are chances that most removal companies will be booked weeks in advance, so they will have neither staff nor vehicles to spare. In a slightly better scenario, you’ll be left to choose among the last ones on your list, risking to hire undependable services (see number 2). Remember to contact and book services you need well in advance, even a month earlier or two wouldn’t be out of line. People often underestimate the scale of the job and time required to pack, so they end up with their schedules wildly extended.
Unfavourable weather
While a few raindrops on a moving day won’t cause much harm, a violent hailstorm may run your plans completely. Hauling large metal appliances in a thunderstorm isn’t the smartest move, and neither is risking your electronics to get soaked in torrential rain. Luckily, even if the weather forecast turns wrong, and instead of a nice sunny day you have raining cats and dogs, the heavy rain can easily turn down into a drizzle so you can proceed. However, make sure all the helpers you hired wear appropriate clothes and sturdy boots, as well as to have all your items wrapped in nylon covers to keep them dry whom both the rains and wet ground.
A smooth home moving experience can be carried out with a bit of thought and consideration. While there are some factors you can’t control, much of the problems can be prevented with careful planning. Unless you have someone whose first-hand experience you can use, make sure to take some advice from these five tips.
