So you’re finally moving out. Congratulations! But you’ve decided on using friends or family instead of hiring professional relocation specialists. Good luck! Moving is stressful enough without friends and family in the mix. Many a familial tie has been frayed, not to mention the friendships severed, by the tensions that boil over during the unexpected snags and snafus of a move. And rest assured that they will be there! No move goes perfectly smoothly; even traveling museum exhibitions with multi-million dollar budgets occasionally experience the odd stumbling block.

But friends and family is what you’ve got, and they’re pledged to help through thick and thin: yes, to the bitter end, even if they don’t know it ” though it may just arrive soon enough! So the trick is to utilize their services appropriately, taking special care not to take them for granted while making sure that they feel appreciated and are even somehow compensated, in a sense. (Perhaps a little housewarming party on the day of the move itself would be nice, assuming it doesn’t simply add to your things-to-do list on an already stressful day!)

Always plan ahead and pack all your items early for the move. A great way to save time is to create a checklist of all your items and the jobs assigned to your friends and family. Keep things simple and light hearted, you don’t want to turn your family and friends against you.

One of the biggest jobs during the move is the actual loading and unloading of boxes. Again make sure ahead of time that everything is securely packed away and that you know where everything is and where its supposed to go in your new home. Preparing ahead of time will save a large amount of time, the last thing you want to be doing is wasting your helps time because you forgot to prepare for the brunt of the work. If you don’t prepare beforehand your family and friends will simply be hanging out as you prepare boxes and the lists, then they will be more likely to blow you off and leave.

As an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so too does it pay more than anything for you to have a water-tight plan of action that is executed more or less like clockwork on Moving Day. This way, people do not feel taken for granted or inconvenienced more than they had bargained, while you save money on professional moving services and actually cement your ties ever-stronger through shared stress.