No matter where you are and what you do, your health should always be your top priority.
This is especially true when you’re trying to survive a house move – an event that is often classified as one of the most stressful things a person can go through in their life.
Staying healthy, safe, and sane during a move just can’t be stressed enough. The truth is that it’s not only important, it’s critically important to be in good shape, both mentally and physically, to pull off a successful move to another home.
How to survive a move and stay healthy in the process?
That’s a good question, isn’t it?
Luckily, we’ve got a good answer – 10 good answers, to be precise.
Here are the top 10 ways to stay healthy during a move.
1. Eat healthy during a move
There are a number of good ways to stay healthy during a move and the first thing on your health agenda should be to eat healthier so that you can have the physical strength and the emotional stamina to survive your house move.
How to eat healthy when moving house?
1.1 Create a healthy meal plan
Your first task is to tailor a meal plan to your specific needs during the preparation period.
Borrow a bit of time from your busy schedule and create a menu for what you’ll have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day until you find yourself in the new home.
Throw in some healthy snacks (fruits, dried fruits, nuts, whole-grain crackers, etc.) between the major meals to keep your energy levels high.
1.2 Focus on the healthy food you have
It’s so much easier to order in or to eat out while you’re busy working on your various move-related tasks.
However, nothing compares to home-cooked healthy meals so why should you waste any money during an already expensive move?
Besides, you’ll do good using up your food supplies before moving out too.
1.3 Make an effort not to skip meals
The time and efforts you’ve invested in setting up a meal plan will pay off handsomely as your moving schedule gets busier and busier with the approach of Moving day.
Make sure you get a nutritious breakfast to start your day on the right foot and then make a genuine effort not to skip any major meals during the day. You’ll definitely need the energy during the day.
It’s important to stay away from any junk food – do keep non-perishable healthy snacks close by for the times when your energy level starts to drop.
In addition to eating healthier, another way to stay healthy during a move is to make sure you stay properly hydrated while you work – especially during a summer move when the excessive heat in the air can easily dehydrate your body.
Mild to moderate dehydration can bring about a series of unpleasant side effects – increased thirst, dry mouth, headaches, dry skin, dizziness, etc. – the last things you’d want to experience while you’re laboring away to guarantee a smooth house move.
Stay healthy during your move by drinking enough water or tea – especially green tea without the added sugar that is known to be excellent in quenching one’s thirst.
Thus, it’s best to stay away from or at least limit the intake of carbonated drinks that have high sugar content but are low in nutrition (most types of drinking sodas). It’s easy to see why too – a higher dose of carbohydrates will leave you even thirstier and may lead to sugar crashes and energy slumps at a time when you’ll need all the energy and stamina you can get.
Getting enough sleep is crucial during the time of moving from one home to another.
The house-moving process offers an unhealthy overdose of stress, anxiety, and work, so the best way to tackle the challenges of your own house move is to wake up well-rested in the morning after a healthy dosage of undisturbed sleep.
Be sure that good sleep will have a lot to do with you surviving your move and staying healthy in the process.
No matter how you look at it, it’s a bad idea to sacrifice your normal sleep hours only to be able to finish more work. It may be okay to do this once or twice when you know the extra work will really make a difference in the end, but you shouldn’t disrupt your habitual sleep pattern on a regular basis just to make up for lost time due to bad planning and improper organization.
Bear in mind that in most cases, it’ll be counterproductive to sacrifice your regular sleep hours simply because you’ll be too fatigued and definitely not as productive the next day. With less sleep, you’ll also find it much harder to concentrate on the tasks at hand.
You can forget about your beauty sleep for the time being – stay healthy when moving house by getting your 7-9 hours of survival sleep.
In reality, there are 3 solutions to the not-enough-time-to-sleep problem:
There’s a good reason why packing for a move is the most dreaded task in anyone’s moving checklist – it takes forever to complete, it requires maximum effort from whoever’s doing it, and it demands money for all sorts of packing materials too.
The trick to staying healthy during a move is to tackle the home packing task in the best possible way – efficiently (quickly, easily, and cheaply) and with minimum stress.
Just imagine how much healthier – emotionally and physically – you will be if you manage to finish the most difficult pre-move task without too much hassle.
So, there’s little doubt that one of the best ways to stay healthy during a stressful move is to have a successful home packing experience.
START packing your things, little by little, as soon as your house move is confirmed. It’s never too early to begin packing for a move.
FOLLOW a good packing timeline to increase packing efficiency by minimizing any instances of wasted time, or downtime.
INITIATE the packing task from the toughest rooms to pack (storage areas, kitchen) and work your way toward the premises that are pretty straightforward to pack up.
GET RID of all unwanted or unneeded items before packing to save time, money, and space.
HAVE frequent breaks when packing to catch your breath and avoid exertion.
INCREASE your packing motivation by breaking the entire packing process into more manageable mini-tasks.
Staying healthy when moving house also means not getting injured during the house-moving process.
Whether you realize it or not, one wrong move or a single slip could lead to a serious injury, especially when a heavy object is being carried at that specific moment of time.
And, as you well know, moving house involves a lot of strenuous and demanding activities – lifting, carrying, and loading large and heavy furniture pieces, big household appliances, overfilled boxes, and other types of heavyweight household items.
To avoid injury-prone accidents on the day of the move, make sure you use the proper lifting techniques below when handling heavy objects.
Stay safe, stay healthy!
HAVE a good plan of action ready before you lift any heavy items. Assess the situation carefully to determine how you, and hopefully your friends, will handle the heavy load safely.
KEEP your back straight and your shoulders back when lifting heavy objects. You want to keep your upper back as straight as possible to avoid horrible back injuries.
BEND your knees, not your back. By doing so, you will engage the much stronger leg muscles and will reduce the strain on your much weaker back muscles. This safety rule is really crucial to avoid injuries when lifting heavy things.
GET a good grip on whatever it is that you’re lifting and moving. For increased safety, wear high-quality work gloves that’ll give you that extra grip and will protect your fingers and hands.
KEEP heavy objects close to your waist, centered in relation to your body. This way, you’ll have much better stability as the load stays within your center of gravity.
MOVE slowly while carrying super-heavy items. Do NOT make any sudden and abrupt movements or you may lose your footing.
Your health, the health of your family members, and the health of your helping friends are what matter the most.
During a house move, there may be numerous situations that will be deemed as risky and dangerous – stressful situations that can lead to bad injuries if utmost care is not exercised and safety measures are not employed.
It’s your top-priority task to guarantee the health of everyone involved in the move!
In addition to following the correct lifting techniques, here are several other safety precautions that you must take on the day of the move.
USEPROPER MOVING EQUIPMENT to prevent injuries from taking place during your move. Place furniture sliders under the legs or sides of heavy furniture to be able to slide those pieces easily across the room with zero effort and zero floor damage. Also, use a furniture dolly (the 4-wheel flat platform) or an appliance dolly (the 2-wheel L-shaped lever also known as a hand truck) when moving heavy household objects or heavy boxes out of your old home or into your new place.
MIND WHAT YOU WEAR on Moving day to prevent easily-avoidable accidents and to preserve your health. Wear comfortable shoes that give you excellent traction (anti-slip soles) and offer good ankle protection. Also, wear clothes that offer you enough freedom of movement and a good level of comfort. Don’t forget to wear high-quality work gloves to protect your hands and fingers as well.
CLEAR ALL PATHWAYS leading out of your home – make sure there are no obstacles on them that might endanger your safety. Also, check the paths from the front door of your house or apartment building to the moving vehicle and make sure they are free of dust, mud, snow, or ice.
You must already know that too much stress can be really bad for your health. The bad news here is that moving to another house is often ranked as one of the most stressful things you can go through in life.
So, what can you do to reduce the stress of moving and stay healthy during the move?
The increased levels of stress when moving house will be a direct result of several stressful factors (stressors), the major ones being MONEY and TIME.
Money
The stress of moving house is real and it’s really bad for you.
When your hard-earned money is at risk, then it’s only normal that you’ll feel stressed out and worried about spending more dollars than you absolutely need to.
Learn how to manage your moving expenses and the moving stress will surely go down a few notches.
The 3 major things YOU can do to lower your moving costs are:
find an affordable mover,
declutter your home and move only the things you must take with you, and
find cheap packing supplies, including free moving boxes.
Staying emotionally healthy during a move is of paramount importance. A house move will offer many ups and downs – an emotional rollercoaster ride with large quantities of strong feelings such as denial, excitement, confusion, sadness, fear, stress, anxiety, and even depression.
The best thing you can do about your emotional equilibrium is to make a genuine effort to remain calm, composed, and cool-headed.
Be easy on yourself. Don’t be too harsh on yourself – you’ll be going through major changes, so it’s really important that you give yourself more time to acclimate to those changes.
Focus on the positives. You have to believe that the upcoming house move will be for the better. Focus on all the positive aspects of your move, all the things you’re going to win as a result of the relocation – a fresh start, brand-new opportunities, a better job, new friends, a larger home, a chance to not make the same mistakes. Leave all negativity behind.
Steal some time for yourself. A great way to calm your nerves is to borrow some time for yourself from the super-busy moving preparations. The idea here is to do something that you love to help you keep your sanity during that madness of a move. Listen to relaxing MUSIC to unwind during breaks or even when packing for a move. Read from your favorite BOOKS whenever you get the chance. Play GAMES to distract yourself from all the work and have some fun during the house move too.
Surround yourself with nature. Even a short walk in nature (the city park, for example) should calm you down by giving you that peaceful and relaxing time with your own thoughts.
A house move is not meant to be tackled entirely on your own – not only is it too much work for one person, but the instances of lifting and carrying heavy objects on Moving day are too risky to be handled by only one pair of hands.
What would you do without your good friends?
Don’t sacrifice your health in a pointless attempt to prove to yourself that you’re stronger and tougher than people think you are. Instead, be smart and accept any friendly offers of help you get.
If you don’t get such offers, then be brave enough to reach out to your good friends and ask them to help you out – either with packing up your things or with moving heavy furniture on the day of the move.
ASK your friends for assistance as early as you can to minimize the disruption of their own plans. It’s best to do this in person, but if that’s not possible, then you can always use the convenience of your preferred social network.
BE honest with your pals and tell them exactly what type of assistance you need from them and how much time you plan to keep them busy.
CREATE a plan of action to make everything more efficient when your friends arrive – provide the necessary moving equipment and get hold of the required packing materials.
BE a good host by providing various types of refreshments – snacks and beverages – for your pals. Also, try to make it fun – after all, these are your good friends so mixing business with some pleasure won’t hurt at all.
The best way to stay healthy when moving house is to let professionals handle the physical side of your move.
It’s not a secret that Moving day can bring about many risks and dangers for you and your family, especially when big and heavy household items need to be taken out of your home and loaded safely onto a moving truck.
Basically, one wrong move can lead to property damage (broken belongings, floor or wall damage), while one wrong step can cause personal injuries (crushed fingers, cuts and scrapes, strained ankles, hurt backs, etc.).
And if you happen to be moving for the first time, then you and your health will be even in greater danger than you think.
Stay healthy. Stay safe. Stay sane.
Do yourself a favor and transfer the burden of Moving day to experienced professionals who just happen to know what it takes to guarantee safety during the most dangerous and unpredictable day in a house move.
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