Many people find they must list their house and prepare for a move in order to relocate for a job or to respond to a family emergency. Selling your house can be stressful in and of itself, but when you throw a move into the mix, you might find the stress creeping up as you try to manage all the details.

Fortunately, you can do things as you prepare for moving day to make it easier to sell your house and keep your stress levels down. Consider the following tips when it feels like you can’t possibly do both things at once.

Rent a Storage Unit

One of the main challenges with planning a move and trying to sell your home is making sure your home is ready for potential buyers at the drop of the hat. How can you, for example, spend a day purging kids’ toys and cleaning out the storage room when your agent could call hoping to show the home to someone who could be the buyer you are looking for?

A storage unit helps to solve this problem in two ways. First, once you have items packed in boxes, you don’t want them hanging around to clutter up rooms. Boxes make rooms look smaller, and you want each room to shine to its full potential. You can store already packed items in your unit.

Second, you can relocate the entire contents of a room to a storage unit, and then go through the items after they’ve been moved out. This way, you can still go through old school awards, clothes, and wedding keepsakes without worrying about how long it will take to pare down your belongings.

Moving companies often provide storage or partner with local storage facilities to make it easier and more affordable to rent extra space. Using storage can also help with your sale. Vacated, uncluttered spaces can make a home much more appealing to buyers. Buyers would rather look at a clear garage instead of a space filled with camping gear and bikes.

Rely on Professional Help

Moving and selling can both be DIY jobs. Many people consider selling their house by owner or moving everything themselves by tackling packing, renting a truck, hauling, and unpacking with just the help of family or friends. While DIY projects are great in other areas, when you are selling and moving at the same time, you can’t afford to be without a professional.

A real estate agent handles a lot of the headaches of selling. Also, because you already have to move, selling your house quickly is essential to your moving plans and your financial well-being. Not only will using an agent help you to sell your home faster, but you may also see much greater profits on the sale because of the expertise of your agent.

With moving services, you can hire out mundane tasks like packing, freeing up your time to plan open houses, tour homes in your new city or town, and attend meetings with your real estate agent. Professional packing services are efficient, which means you might only need to close your house for showing for a day or two while the pros work their magic.

Make a Practical To-Do List

You probably have a list of tasks in your mind, but you also need to hammer out some concrete, practical goals to help with selling your home and meeting your deadlines for planning your move. Simple items to include on your to-do list include:

  • Moving old furniture out of the house. Staging your home with newer or more stylish modern furniture can sometimes help a home to sell faster.
  • Sprucing up the house. Your agent might give you a list of things to do in order to prepare your house for photos and buyer showings. Set aside time for trimming hedges, painting rooms, refinishing floors, or replacing light fixtures.
  • Setting your move-out date. If you have a storage unit and staged furniture, you don’t have to worry about using your belongings until the last minute. You can plan your moving day in advance and use the staged furniture even after you’ve left.

Meet with both your mover and your agent to decide what order is best for your plan. It may take some tweaking, but with preparation, you don’t have to feel like you are scrambling to get everything done.

Set a Showing Schedule

Finally, you might not be able to maintain the perfectly clean home every day, especially if you are trying to pack and move things out to a storage unit. If you can’t have your house ready all the time, decide on a showing schedule and open house hours so you do know what to expect.

For example, if you have your house ready every Tuesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from noon until 7 or 8 in the evening, you can plan to be out of the house. You can also breathe more easily and use your off days to get moving and improvement items checked off the list.