Every year, about 27 million Americans move between houses or apartments.
Whether you’re moving down the street or across the country, making a move can be incredibly stressful. This is only exacerbated if you are planning on making a move in one day.
Is it possible to move in one day? Yes, it is, but it’ll take some planning ahead.
Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about same day moving.
Take Care of Yourself: Same Day Moving Is a Big Task
Make sure to get a good night’s sleep the night before your big move, eat nourishing meals, and drink plenty of water. If you’re going to move in one day, it’s absolutely essential that you are firing on all cylinders and feeling your best.
Wondering How to Move in One Day? The First Step Is: Stay Calm
Same day moving is a big, big job. Obviously, how big of a job it is depends on whether you’re moving out of a furnished room you’re subletting or a five-bedroom house. Either way, though, moving is stressful and can get overwhelming fast.
When you’ve only got one day to move, the most important thing is to stay calm. Panicking will only make the process worse, so it’s important to employ whatever stress-reducing tactics you can. Keep your eye on the prize and take deep breaths.
Keep Clutter at Bay Before You Move in One Day
Even if you only have one day to move, you likely have a bit of a heads up in the preceding days. As you are anticipating the big day, be sure to not let clutter pile up. By keeping your home as organized as possible, you can help make packing and moving much easier and much quicker.
If you know that you’re going to be moving next season or even next year, it’s not too early to start thinking about getting rid of some stuff. Purging your closet or your garage can help you have less stuff to deal with when moving day comes.
Do Anything That You Can Do Ahead of Time in the Days Leading Up to Your Move
Same day moving is possible, but tricky. If you have an advanced warning that you are only going to have one day to move, do everything and anything you can ahead of time.
If you’re hiring a moving company, get that setup. Shipping your car to your next location? Call some car moving companies for quotes and to schedule moving your car ahead of time. You can also use our moving cost estimator to get a quote for the cost of moving your stuff as well as your car.
You can also deal with things like calling utility companies, getting your packing supplies, eating the food you have in the house, purging items you don’t need, and packing up rooms that don’t get much use.
Make a Packing List
If you’re engaging in same day moving, things might feel a little hectic. Even if you’re pressed for time, it can make sense to get a little organized. Make a packing list and a list of things that you intend to donate.
Ask for Help
Same day moving doesn’t have to mean you should be going it alone. Moving is a big job no matter if you’re moving out of a tiny studio apartment or moving out of a three-bedroom house.
You basically have two options here. You could either hire a moving company to help you move your stuff, and you could even have them help you pack. Or, if you’d rather not spend the money on a professional moving company, you can enlist some family and friends to help you get the job done.
Get organized before your helpers show up to make sure that you can be using their time wisely when they’re at your place. Make a ton of coffee and order some lunch for everybody and you’ll be amazed how much you can get done in a short period of time.
Get Started Early in the Morning
Same day moving is possible, but you’ll definitely want to get started as early as humanly possible. This is not the day to sleep in until noon. Make sure to get a good night’s sleep the night before and get going right away in the morning.
Starting early gives you time to deal with issues if they crop up during the day. It also ensures that you’ll be able to take some much-needed breaks throughout the moving process.
Take It One Room at a Time
When you think about making a move in one day, do you start to get incredibly overwhelmed? That’s perfectly natural, as there are a lot of moving parts to a move and it can be hard to make sense of it all.
The best way to keep your move from becoming too overwhelming is to take it one room at a time. Create a moving timeline that is organized room by room. The kitchen is a good room to start with, and then you can go shelf by shelf and drawer by drawer.
When you’re working on one room at a time, you can also come up with a process of moving from ceiling to floor, left to right. Working in a methodical way and staying focused on the task at hand can help you stay calm in the face of a big job.
Once your helpers arrive, you can assign each of them a room. You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that while you’ve been packing up the kitchen, your friends and family have managed to get the rest of the rooms in your house packed, too.
Ruthlessly Get Rid of What You Don’t Need as You Pack
If you’re wondering how to move in one day, one of the best tricks you can have up your sleeve is only moving what you want and nothing more. If you have time in the weeks or months leading up to your move to go through all of your belongings and donate, recycle, or trash everything you don’t want, then definitely take the time to do so.
If you don’t have time, though, and you have to get rid of stuff while you’re packing, it’s time to be ruthless. When you’re packing, if you come across items that you forgot about and haven’t needed to use in a year or so, it’s probably time to toss it.
Keep Your Clothes on Their Hangers
One time-consuming thing that you just don’t have time to deal with during same-day moving is folding all of your clothes. Instead of taking the time to do this, keep your clothes on their hangers. You can then just put a trash bag around them with the hook of the hanger exposed for easy transportation.
Inside your trailer or truck, you can hang your clothes on a hanger bar or you can hang a temporary rope. This trick makes dealing with moving clothes much quicker and less of a hassle.
Use What You Have Available
When you stop to think about it, you probably have a lot of perfect moving containers already. Things like laundry hampers, trash bags, duffle bags, and suitcases can all be packed full of your still so that you don’t have to buy as many cardboard boxes.
If you are hiring a same day moving company, they will probably provide reusable moving boxes for the day or you can buy moving materials from them. However, it’s always best to be as packed up as possible before they show up to start the move.
Keep Your Supplies Handy and Buy Them Ahead of Time
Throughout the day, you’ll be constantly using the same tools and supplies over and over again. Things like packing tape, packing paper, bubble wrap, markers, and boxes are going to be your constant companion.
That being said, when you’re engaging in same day moving, it’s easy for the environment to get pretty chaotic pretty fast. You might have just had the packing tape, but now it’s nowhere to be seen. Reduce the amount of time that you’re looking for something that was just in your hand by creating a supply station or a supply caddy.
If you know that you’re going to have to move in one day, do yourself a favor and buy all of your supplies ahead of time. You’re going to want all of the time you can get on the big move day. The last thing you want to do is waste precious time waiting in line at a UHaul store to get some packing tape and bubble wrap.
Label Your Boxes
When you’re same day moving, it’s easy to want to just throw everything into the truck and figure it out on the other end. While worse things have happened, you’d really be doing yourself a favor by employing a bit of organization on the front end.
Labeling your boxes when you’re packing them up can help you know where everything is when you get to your new location. Without this information, unpacking can be way more complicated and kind of a nightmare.
Don’t Forget About Car Shipping When You’re Planning Your Move
If you’re making a move in one day, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Once you start adding your own vehicles into the equation, it can start getting way too complicated.
Are you looking for car moving companies to help you on the big day?
At Nexus Auto Transport, we offer a simple car transport service that can help make your moving day way less stressful. Whether you’ve hired a same day moving company or you are making the move on your own with your buddies, having some help transporting your car can make a big difference.
Are you moving and you’re considering shipping your car? You can receive a free quote today!
