20 Top Tips on Moving House while managing fatigue and disability

Moving house is exhausting and a major upheaval for everyone - but moving house while disabled comes with a whole new level of challenges!

I recently moved house - stage one of a complex long term plan that will end with me living in a custom-built accessible annex. It's been exhausting but I got through it in better shape than I expected.

I thought I'd share some of my top tips on moving house while disabled - things I've found helpful in managing my hypermobility, fatigue, and autonomic dysfunction during my move. I don't expect anyone else will find everything here useful, as everyone's situation is different, but hopefully some things will help someone!

This list isn't exhaustive - and if I think of more things later, I'll add them.

1. Get any symptoms that aren't your normal checked: Just in case they are something treatable rather than your usual 'stuff I have to live with' - I had a blood test that revealed B12 deficiency, and I started treatment just before my move started in earnest. While it didn't cure my other conditions it did lift a layer of fatigue and cognitive clouding which made everything that bit more manageable. (and yes, I know I was incredibly fortunate with this!)

2. Start sorting as soon as you decide you want to move. I started in March - and moved in November. I went through one cupboard or shelf at a time, boxing up everything 'keep, but can do without for 6 months', leaving 'keep and use' stuff on the shelf, and getting rid of anything 'donate/discard'. This means when you get to the point of final packing most of the decisions have already been made, so it is relatively easy (and if you have help, you can just instruct them to 'pack everything from these shelves').

3. Label the boxes. I didn't always do this properly, especially on the stuff that has gone into storage. So I'll have to do a bit of extra sorting /deciding /communicating when unpacking when I do my final move into my annex.

4. Allocate a 'tidy space' - a space where boxes and packing equipment must never be left. Looking at packing chaos is exhausting - I needed a space I could get away from it.

5. Allocate a 'packing storage space' - where you can have a pile of boxes for keeping, and also temporary piles of 'donate/discard' stuff.

6. 

   Regular small charity shop or recycling centre/tip trips is better than fewer big trips. Initially I 'saved up' the stuff I needed to get rid of to make the trip 'more worthwhile'. But actually it worked better when I switched to regularly getting rid of smaller amounts of stuff (or even better, a friend popping round to collect the charity shop stuff - or the charity shop sending a collection van). Part of this is because the mental relief of a pile of stuff being gone is huge - and every time I got rid of that pile it was like a weight off my mind. And part because lifting a couple of boxes into the car every week or two is a lot more manageable than completely filling my car every few months!

   Note: I didn't do any selling online because it was too much brain power. However, using facebook marketplace, ebay or freecycle etc might work well for some people. I did send periodic telegram messages to friends asking if they wanted to take various items - meaning I got rid of some of the stuff I didn't need any longer but also felt I'd done a kindness at the same time.

7. If purchasing a home, don't be afraid to ask for a gap between exchanging the contracts - and the actual move date. This gives time where you are committed to moving so can book help with confidence - but you can also spread things out a little more to help you pace. My gap was excessive - and due to one person on the chain being really fussy. It was about 5 weeks between exchanging and moving - and although it wasn't my decision, it was a HUGE help in pacing (and getting through it in the best shape possible)

8. If your move involves renting: overlap! (By overlap I mean have a period where you own/rent both places - so I still owned my old house for one month after I'd physically moved into my rented accommodation). Because we exchanged early, I moved into rented about 4 weeks before selling. This meant I could take a few days to set up the rented place so it felt like home and was tidy - then move into to a low stress environment. Then do things in stages at the old place - 2-3 hours a day for a couple of days, then a day or two off - repeated for weeks. But always being able to go home - away from the chaos, where I could relax afterwards. In fact, I think if I had to move without an overlap, I'd see if I could budget for a weeks stay in a local hotel/Bed n breakfast/with a friend over the move date - so I could get away from the chaos and pace better.

9. Use all the help you can get! Over the weeks, I had help from local friends, neighbours, and family, as well as paid help from my PA (making slow but steady packing progress every month for about 9 months), some teens from a local youth group wanting to earn some cash (kids of friends I know well) and a local '2 men with a van'. There are also professional moving companies - but they are more expensive, and because I was downsizing drastically, I needed to do a huge amount of sorting so I chose to pack the boxes while sorting, and use the man with a van option instead. If I wasn't downsizing I'd definitely have considered using a proper moving company.

10. "Do really you want this in your new house?" is a very useful question when dithering about whether to keep something! As is having someone with you who can ask this and similar questions when you start to dither.

11. Decision fatigue is real! Starting to make the decisions really early meant I was also able to take regular breaks. I'd take a week or so off with no packing work at all each time I started to feel totally overwhelmed by it all.

12. Throughout the process, regularly check that your storage/packing area's aren't encroaching on your tidy space! this happened and without noticing why, my stress levels went up, and I couldn't face any packing at all. Then my PA cleared my tidy space of packing boxes - and instantly I could cope with more again!

13. My overlap meant I could also spread out telling organisations that I'd moved - I did a few each week. Prioritising supermarket/food shops first, then health, then financial, then government (DVLA etc) - and finally other.

14. When moving in, have a floor plan showing where you want each item of furniture to go - and if possible - especially if the layout is tight - put masking tape on the floor to show exactly where everything goes. This massively reduces the spoken communication and brainpower required to manage your furniture movers!

15. For the final few days, have things like meals planned in advance (easy food, comfort food, and no-prep food highly recommended). I did really well until the final 3-4 days - when it was 'these things HAVE to be done by the move date' - so pacing options were far fewer - and stress levels higher. I had microwave meals ready for most of the final days - and a takeaway planned for the last evening - a relatively small thing, but it saved the 'I need food and I can't decide what, and it's all too much'.

16. For days with lots of packing/unpacking - brace up! If you have joint supports, compression leggings or gloves, or support tape that you sometimes use - use them. Your body needs all the help it can get! Note: Use all aids/adaptations as prescribed. Be careful with splints that restrict movement of a joint (like rigid wrist braces) as I find they can sometimes aggravate adjacent joints more when used a lot. Just something to be aware of. I used my wristbraces for heavy lifting, but just tubigrip & compression gloves for packing boxes because the wrists being held straight put extra strain on my elbows for certain movements that cancelled out the benefit to the wrists - and those movements happened a lot when packing boxes!

17. At the new place: have a 'tidy zone' (for me, the bedroom area) - priority 1 for unpacking, and once it is set up, no chaos allowed in.

18. At the new place: have a 'not sorted yet' zone. And make sure it isn't visible from your tidy zone. This can be slowly worked through over time, but keeping it in one place means you can escape from it without leaving the house. (My pile is behind the sofa. Still got a couple of boxes there, but I can't see them from my recharging spaces, so I don't feel constantly overwhelmed/stressed by them.)

19. It's ok to reduce standards for housework or personal care during the move if needed. With only so much energy, sometimes something has to give. For me, showers, cooked meals, and household tasks all reduced in frequency over the month of the move - even with all the help I had. By 'society's standards' this can feel like a failure - but actually it's an important pacing decision that will be better in the long run.

20. Be prepared for the post-move crash. Plan ahead so you can have easy food (can be snacks rather than full meals, or takeaways, or microwave meals, or sandwiches, or anything easy for you), bed rest, cosy lighting, clean bedding and pjs, time off work etc. I tend to be ok-ish while I need to keep going - running off adrenaline. But when a thing is over and I relax: total splat. This used to make me panic - what if I've gotten loads worse? why am I like this? etc. But actively planning for the fact that I'm going to feel horrendous from the 'overdoing hang-over' and making practical preparations for it really helps - not least because when most in need of rest, I'm least capable of arranging it, and stressing about it will always slow recharging down!

    Wholeheartedly planning a couple of days of cosy is a much nicer experience than spending the same amount of time feeling awful and getting nothing done, while guilt-tripping myself for not doing what I can't!

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