Moving

It's not when you'd think.

It's pretty darn scary—but totally doable.

White noise machines are key.

While a short-term move may never be stress-free, there are a handful of things that can prevent the event from feeling completely traumatizing.

Consider this list as your guide for those precious first hours in a new home.

Nothing prepares you better for co-habitating than… co-habitating.

You know what they say when you assume: You make... well, you know.

Let’s go Goodwill hunting, renter-style.

Save money—and a little sanity, too.

Yeesh! With a price this high, no wonder college graduates are delaying move-in day.

From small maintenance-related troubleshooting to money-saving tactics, here are the eight questions that Apartment Therapy staffers say will prove useful down the line.

Every sign has signature quirks, astrologists say. So, we asked them to share what you might come to know about your roommates, based on their zodiac signs.

As if Amazon didn’t already do everything, it's now dipping into real estate with a lead-generation partnership with Realogy, the parent company of national brokerages.

The thing that makes the biggest difference between an apartment and a "home" surprisingly isn't just your salary—it's your mentality.

If you're holding off on an IKEA run until after move-in day, you're missing out big time.

Though many New Yorkers dream of knocking down walls or upgrading to a bigger apartment to get a Carrie Bradshaw-sized closet, living with one of the smallest I'd ever seen for six years taught me that I don't need a walk-in closet. Ever. No one does.

It's easy to get so overwhelmed you don't know where to start when moving, but I'll make it simple for you: Here's one thing that you can do, right now.

Whether it's trying to save some cash, find more room, or give a relationship a real shot, it's likely you'll pack up everything you own in cardboard boxes and rent a moving van more than once before you hit 30.

To help make the moving process easier on Fido and Fluffy, we’ve asked animal trainers and behaviorists for their best pet-friendly moving tips.

You don’t have to wait until the stressful days before a big move to feel that freedom. Here's how to declutter like you're moving without actually doing it.

I needed clever storage solutions or the spacious apartment I dreamed about would turn into a cluttered reality. Luckily, I found random solutions that helped me store everything.

Moving down the block or across town is stressful enough, but nothing compares to a long-distance move. Those Herculean tasks always remind me of an hilarious Hyperbole and a Half comic: Author Allie Brosh’s excellently described her move from Montana to Oregon as “nearly as stressful and futile as trying to run away from lava in swim fins.” Packing up all your belongings is one thing. Relocating nearly everything in your adult life—utilities, friendships, jobs, etc.

Everything must go.

There's a good chance you're either over- or underestimating how long your move will take.

Moving is already a pain under the best circumstances, but there are even more reasons to dread it during the summer. It’s when the vast majority of moves take place, says Adam Doron, CEO of Unpakt, a booking and pricing site for movers. Because demand is high, prices are often at a premium and logistics are trickier than in other times of the year. But you don’t have to abandon your possessions curbside, Oregon Trail-style.

It’s no secret that packing everything up and moving is both exciting (a new space! A new home!) and a true nightmare. (Seriously, how do you accumulate so much stuff in one household?) But while packing up boxes isn’t the most fun thing in the world, there are some silver linings. For one, you’ll get to KonMari the heck out of your place. Two… okay that’s basically the only silver lining.

When I had to coordinate moves across continents three times in the span of a decade, I quickly realized I had been living in a bubble, unable to see my truest self.

Moving. UGH. Packing your entire apartment and schlepping it across town? I’d much rather use those cardboard boxes for just about anything besides moving. (Fort building competition, anyone?) But, alas, people do move. In fact, about 35 million Americans do every year. So why do that many people put themselves through all that labor and legwork? Well, Porch, a company which connects homeowners with home-oriented professionals, asked more than 1,000 people just that.

Moving is one of life’s most stressful events, and it’s no wonder why. It’s expensive. You have to go through all your belongings and decide what no longer sparks joy. Then there’s all the packing. This is all before actual moving day rolls around, which adds physical labor to the equation. It’s not hard to see why the whole thing generally makes people want to pull their hair out.But it doesn’t have to be that way!

It’s so easy to let our things pile up until moving day when you look around and can’t believe how much stuff you have. But wouldn’t it be far more productive to do regular “cleanse-outs,” where you routinely look at your stuff with a critical eye? We posed that question to Ali Wenzke, a moving expert—she and her family have moved 10 times in 11 years in seven states around the U.S.

Moving in together is a huge step in your relationship. You’ll soon learn how to share a home together, but also how to kindly and confidently share your true feelings, like when your sweet and lovely partner asks what you really think about that old, worn-out chair of theirs.

Moving is nerve-wracking enough for the humans of the family. Can you imagine the stress on our furry friends when they’re uprooted from the homes they’ve come to know? Here are some ways to keep pets’ anxiety to a minimum during a relocation. Try to bring boxes and moving paraphernalia into your current home as early as is reasonable. This gives animals time to explore and become accustomed to the influx of new and foreign objects.

So you’re moving, huh? Congratulations! While moving itself is stressful, the prospects of a new place are usually always exciting. It’s a fresh start — a chance to reorganize and redecorate! But where do you start? I’ll tell you: You start before you move in — especially in the kitchen. Here are five things to take care of before you unpack that first kitchen box.

I’d like to start by saying: I hate moving. I am known to be extremely dramatic when it comes to getting organized, packing up my belongings, and essentially living in a real-life obstacle course (dodging suitcases, stepping over boxes) while I await my move. But there was one aspect of my recent relocation—only 20 blocks, but in New York City that still feels like an undertaking—that was justifiably overwhelming: The Purging Of The Bookshelf. Sounds like a horror movie, right?

E. L. James might have had a big hit on her hands with “50 Shades of Grey,” but I have a bone to pick with the bestselling author: There are more like 50 million shades of gray. Don’t believe me? Just trying picking a gray paint color for your home. That was the dilemma facing me when buying our first home two years ago. I wanted to move in as soon as possible, which meant getting the house painted (while empty) ASAP.

When going from a 2,200-square-foot traditional home to a 300-square-foot renovated RV, my family and I ended up getting rid of 80 percent of our belongings. Downsizing is an experience that I recommend to anyone—no matter the size of your home. While living in a tiny vehicle might not be for everyone, I believe that getting rid of all that overwhelming “stuff” can help you live simpler and sometimes even happier.

Moving is the worst! Or, more accurately, packing is the worst. Getting set up in a new home is fun, and a chance for a fresh start. But packing is a slog, and if you’re not at least a little strategic about it, you can make more work for yourself. One essential part of your packing process should be decluttering. Do not put something in a box if you don’t want it to live in your new kitchen!

It can help you haul literally anything.

You step out of your car at an open house and walk into what looks like your dream home. It’s perfectly picturesque from the outside, but as soon as you get through the doorway, you see it—there’s a giant “Live Laugh Love” decal stuck onto the living room wall. For legions of prospective homeowners, real estate agents tell us that word art tends to be at the top of the cringe-inducing decor list—and, point blank, word art makes it hard to sell a home.

There is no shortage of things to see and do in the nine states that make up the Southeast (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia). I’ve loved living here for most of my life, and even decided to move back after a grand three-year adventure living in Alaska.

Moving can be a giant pain in the butt. Yet, while you’re packing up your entire existence, it’s a great opportunity to assess which of your possessions you no longer need or want (and perhaps those that don’t spark joy?) including furniture. While it’s tempting to kick old furniture to the curb and let the garbage man take care of it, it’s much more sustainable and useful to donate such items to a charity, such as Goodwill or The Salvation Army. The best part?

I have a confession to make: I haven’t watched “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo.” But that’s mostly because I don’t watch anything. Watching the newest show right when Netflix releases it seems like a waste of my brain energy when I would rather be thinking about Henry Cavill’s Mission: Impossible-Fallout mustache or that Chrissy Teigen Instagram post of John Legend on vacation slowly rocking Miles in his swimsuit when she asks “Can you do GIFs on a video?

When you move a lot, you tend to reflect on all of your stuff a little more often than the average person. If you’ve been living in the same space for years—or decades—your trinkets give you a sense of stability and ownership. But when you’re paying movers by the hour, all that extra stuff starts losing its sentimental charm and instead can look like expensive dead weight. I know this firsthand—I’ve moved 12 times in the past 10 years.

Dear Alice, My boyfriend is moving into my apartment. All of the decor in my place is new, in great condition, and I’ve spent a lot of money on it. It is mostly neutrals with a little bit of blues and greens. When he moves in he insists on hanging up his movie and video game posters and placing his little character figurines around the place.

How to get rid of the things weighing you down when you move—without having to muster strong feelings about your toaster.

If moving is on your to-do list, figuring out how many boxes you need to get the job done shouldn’t stress you out. And, while there’s no exact science to box acquisition, the experts have a few tips you can follow to avoid either buying way too many—or, realistically, too few.

These five places in the United States are especially noteworthy when it comes to being tiny home-friendly.

The closets of my two-bedroom apartment overflowed with things from literally every stage of my life. Though the craft supplies, decorations, and souvenirs could be evidence of a life well-lived, these stuffed storage bins overwhelmed me—a reminder that the clean, clutter-free, minimalist-inspired home I dreamed of was becoming less of a reality each day. I work from home.

Studies say moving ranks right behind divorce and death on the stress scale. So with my moving day right around the corner (or, let’s be real, sneaking up on me), it’s no wonder I was feeling a mirage of emotions: stress, excitement, joy, confusion, to name a few. Mostly, the thought of unpacking filled me with overwhelming dread. But I had a realization: Why did moving have to be scary? Why couldn’t it be a fun, exciting, and—most importantly—controlled experience?

It looks like our favorite royal foursome is splitting up!

When my husband, son, and I moved into our new apartment eight weeks ago, we fell in love with our new warm and welcoming building as well as the energy of the neighborhood itself. While looking at the place, we noticed a fire station two blocks away—but how busy could it be at night? Ha! Joke was on us because rare is the night when New York City’s finest don’t race up the avenue outside our windows on some life-saving mission.

Oh the ‘L’ word: For renters, a landlord can be (hopefully) an awesome resource or, in other situations, a thorn in your side. Either way, when you move into a new place, you’re going to have to deal with your landlord at some point. “When you move into a new rental, you’re also embarking on a new business relationship with the apartment’s owner,” says Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats in New York City.

You’ve found the perfect place, so the hard work is done, right? Not so fast, you’ve got to go through the whole process of moving—packing up your entire life, arranging and paying for movers, buying lots and lots of tape and boxes, and list goes on and on. All of this may sound overwhelming, so we want to help. If you’re moving soon, planning on moving soon, or just have opinions about the subject, take our quick reader survey.

Every IKEA teems with last-minute movers the first and third weekends of the month—it’s just a fact. And if you are like me, you also probably accept as fact that if you’re moving, you are going to have to do an IKEA run the moment after the movers leave.

Feeling like it’s time to size up your space? By all means, do it. But know that it’s going to likely require a bigger investment month-to-month, and probably drain your change right now as you scramble to pay for moving costs and the other expenses that inevitably creep up when you decide to pick up your roots and settle down in a new spot.

When I was a kid, I used to dream of busting out of my hometown. I’d pine for shows in the mid-2000s that featured gorgeous locales like cities in California, or chic ones like New York City. I was convinced that once I made my big move, it’d be permanent: There would be no turning back to come home again. But while my husband finished up with the Army, I found myself needing to house hunt, find a job, and see about putting down roots.

When my boyfriend and I decided to move in together after a year of long distance, I knew there would be our share of compromises. One in particular would be combining the contents of two apartments into one singular household. Though I had done a thorough cleaning of my space and came out with a chunk of items to throw out, sell, or donate, I still naturally had accumulated a good amount of things.

Just because those pesky things aren’t sitting in your closet anymore, it doesn’t mean they’re somewhat easier for another person to have to deal with.

Before I moved into my current apartment, I thought I did a good amount of research: I’d cranked out the numbers for my budget, called around to multiple agents and buildings, and went on plenty of apartment tours. Despite all this, I was shocked at what the market held for me—though Omaha, Nebraska, has been named one of the most affordable cities in the country, most of the townhomes and apartments I’d loved so much were still out of my budget.

When it comes time to move, you will be grateful you have these.

We’re back with the final installment of A Renter’s Diary! We’ve followed Rebekah Hall in her first month moving from a single family home into a 800-square-foot apartment in Little Rock, Arkansas. She’s had to figure out how to downsize and work around the quirks of the space. Last week, Hall shared how she shopped around her apartment (and her parents’ home) for no-cost kitchen storage solutions.

It was time to be inventive and put to use one of the oldest tricks in the book. Here's what I've come up with so far: