The closing date is on the calendar. The movers are booked. Boxes are starting to stack up in the garage. And somewhere underneath the to-do list a quieter question is forming: When, exactly, am I going to do all this?
If you’re moving in or to Austin this summer and feeling overwhelmed, you’re not alone. Our team is in the field nearly every day from May through August, and a version of the same scene plays out in move after move. Take our clients Yvette and Brian: smart, capable people who are running companies, raising three teenage girls and holding their own at high levels. They felt completely overwhelmed by their life turned upside down in boxes. What seemed easy turned into high anxiety when they tried unpacking themselves. So much packing paper and so many boxes to get through while life and business continued moving at a fast pace.
Moving is the work of getting your stuff from your current home to your new one. It is also the work of deciding what to keep, fitting everything into your new place and making that house feel like home. That’s two jobs. Sometimes three. Most people only book help for the first one. We created this guide to help you handle the rest.
Moving overwhelms even organized people
Most of the people we work with describe themselves as organized. They have systems at work. They run their household well. They’ve moved before. So why does this move feel different?
Moving compresses hundreds of small decisions into a tiny window. Before the move, every item you own becomes a question: Keep? Donate? Sell? Toss? After the move, there are more big questions: Where do you want that item to live now? Oh, and you’re also trying to answer those questions on top of your job, your kids, the closing paperwork, the school transfer, the address change for the dentist …
For most of us, there’s just not enough bandwidth for all this. If that’s you, you’re in the right place. The rest of this guide covers what we wish more people knew before move day.
Before you pack: Declutter with intention
Based on what we see with our clients, almost everyone’s instinct is to pack first and sort later. Which we totally get: The boxes are right there. The tape gun is right there. It feels productive.
But this almost always backfires. Things you don’t actually want or need cost you time, energy and probably money at every step. By far, the #1 thing you can do to make your move easier is to declutter: not as a side project, but as the first project.
Here’s how we do it with clients in the weeks before their move:
Start with categories in each room. For example, in the kitchen, you’ll most likely have a lot of categories, like small appliances, cooking utensils, flatware, entertaining dishware, everyday dishware, pots and pans, cleaning supplies, etc. Working by category surfaces duplicates and forgotten purchases that may have been hidden for years. If you find a category in a space where it doesn’t belong, relocate it to the correct room so you can evaluate it in the right area.
Set a guideline for what to keep. Asking yourself “Could I imagine using this item?” doesn’t quite go far enough. Instead, consider these two questions:
- Did you use that item in the past 12 months?
- Would you be sorry if it weren’t in the new place?
-
- Two yeses, it stays.
- One yes, it’s worth a second look.
- Two nos, let it go.
Make decisions in batches. Decision fatigue is real. And you’ll run into it if you keep pushing yourself without a pause to recharge. What does that look like? Twenty minutes on closets, then a break. An hour on the office, then a walk.
Have a place for “go” items ready. Donations bagged and in the car. Items for sale already photographed. Trash bagged and in the bin. Things that don’t have an exit route tend to migrate back into the house.
If you’ve hired movers, decluttering means they have less to carry. So if you’re paying them by weight or by the hour, the savings can be meaningful. We helped our client Debbie declutter for two days before her move. She was excellent at letting go of what she didn’t want in her new home. Our decluttering sessions with Debbie resulted in two SUVs full of donations each day!
Need some step-by-step, room-by-room advice? Our Austin Moving Guide covers what to declutter, in what order, with checklists you can actually use. It’s free, and you can download it at the bottom of this page.
The first 48 hours in your new home
This is a crucial stretch.
The trucks have left. The boxes are (mostly) in the right rooms. You’re standing in your new kitchen with a protein bar and your water bottle trying to figure out where to start. Here’s what we recommend:
Set up the bedrooms first. You need your sleep more than ever right now! So get the beds made and set out toothbrushes and other toiletries for your bedtime routines. Everything else can wait one more night.
Build a working kitchen. Coffee, kettle, one pan, a few plates and bowls, basic cutlery, a knife, a cutting board. Don’t worry much about the rest right now. A working kitchen lets you eat at home, which helps you sleep better, and that helps you make better decisions about everything else.
Resist the urge to “just put it somewhere.” It just sets you up for confusion later. Things that get tucked into the first available drawer or shelf become permanent inhabitants of the wrong place. Six months from now you’ll still be asking, “Why is the can opener in the office closet?”
Identify your three high-traffic systems. The drop zone for keys and bags. The mail spot. The morning routine in the bathroom and kitchen. Get those three working as soon as you can. They are the solution-based systems your new home will run on, and everything else settles in around them.
These first 48 hours are also a key time to call in some help. Many of our unpacking clients tell us afterward that the single best decision they made was outsourcing this stretch: not because they couldn’t do it, but because they wanted to spend that weekend with their family instead of digging through boxes.
When it makes sense to hire help
We work with two kinds of moving clients.
The first is someone experiencing a transition like a relocation, a downsizing, a separation, a new baby or a parent moving in. The emotional weight of the move is heavier than the physical weight, and they want someone in the house who’s calm, kind and unbiased while everything else is changing.
The second is someone whose time is the real constraint. They could unpack their own kitchen. They simply can’t afford the four lost weekends it would take to do it well. They’d rather be at their daughter’s recital, or finishing the proposal for Tuesday, or asleep.
Both groups end up saying a version of the same thing afterward: I didn’t realize how much it was weighing on me until it was done.
We love giving our clients the quiet relief of walking into a finished room and not having to think about it again. If you’d like to talk through whether unpacking support makes sense for your move, we offer a short Connection Call. No pitch, no pressure. Just a conversation about what your move looks like and where help would matter most.
A few notes for Austin specifically
Time the move around the heat if you can. Loading a truck in August in Texas is … not fun. If you have the flexibility, early-morning starts are the difference between a hard day and a brutal one. Plan for extra electrolyte drinks, frequent breaks and at least one fan running in the house.
Plan for the first weekend in your new neighborhood. People moving to Austin, or to a new neighborhood within Austin, tend to underestimate how much time the basics take. Where’s the closest grocery, the nearest dry cleaner, the right dog park? What will be your new school drop-off route? Head off frustration by blocking out some time to figure these things out.
Don’t overlook the school calendar. If you’re moving with kids, the move is much smoother before the school year starts than during it. Many of our summer clients aim to be unpacked by mid-August for exactly this reason.
What the best moves have in common
Across hundreds of moves, the ones that go best share a few things.
They start the decluttering weeks before the move, not days.
They prioritize sleep, food and the three high-traffic systems in the first 48 hours.
They give themselves permission to outsource the parts they dread.
As for the rest, they’re patient with themselves. Our clients frequently tell us that while things feel hectic first, there comes a point when they suddenly realize they’re not in their “new place” anymore.
They’re home.
Your free Austin Moving Guide
If you’re in the early planning stages of moving or in the thick of it, our Austin Moving Guide walks you through the full sequence: what to do six weeks out, three weeks out, the week of the move and the days after. It’s the same framework we use with our unpacking clients, turned into a handy checklist.
Download the guide here, and if at any point you’d rather hand the work to someone else, we’re here. That’s what we do.
