When picking out a new place to live, it’s fun to imagine all the new possibilities you home will bring you. And it’s easy to forget the struggles you’ll have to go through to get there. Moving is pretty much the worst necessity in the world, but, it being a necessity, what can you do? Well, for one thing, you can follow these steps to make your move a little less painful.

Sort Through the Junk

Moving from one home to another is the perfect time to take stock of everything you’ve accumulated. It’s also a great time to get rid of all the stuff you don’t need. Before you start throwing things out, consider holding a garage sale to get back some return on your investments. At the least, donate your unwanted goods to the local charity or thrift store, or at the least give your friends a chance to pick through.

Throwing stuff away should be your last resort. As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and no treasure deserves to be sitting in a landfill, doing harm to the environment. While you might hate that dirty old loveseat you’ve had for ages, someone is bound to love it!

A Box for Every Room

Once you’ve figured out what you keep and what goes, you need to get it all packed away and ready to ship off. How you organize your move will depend on your preferences, but the typical strategy is to separate your goods by which room they belong in. This will make both the packing and unpacking processes a little easier than if you just throw things in boxes haphazardly. Clearly mark all your boxes to keep anything from getting mixed up.

Take Your Time, If Possible

If your move-out and move-in days are flexible and have some overlap, try your best to space out your move over a couple of days and multiple trips. While you may want to get everything done with right away, you might be encouraged to put everything off until the last minute, which is stressful. If you take your time and move some boxes here and there, you won’t tire yourself out. This might not be possible for all cases–like if you’re moving far–but if you’re just moving across town, over a few days, it’ll barely seem like work.

Enlist Help from Your Friends

There’s no “I” in team, and having some friends and family to help you in your move will make the process quicker and more fun. If you’re trying to get the move done over multiple days, this might be hard to plan – unless you’ve got some really great friends and you schedule in advance. Just make sure to repay them – pizza is the commonly-accepted form of moving-help currency. By the way, to cut costs on renting out a moving van, talk to your friend with the truck. He might be tired of being the go-to moving guy amongst his friends, but he’ll be more happy to help if you sweeten the pot with a little ‘za.

Despite taking these measures, you’ll probably find that, while your moving days have been made a little pain-free, you’ll still going to run into unimagined challenges. A sofa isn’t going to fit through the door, you’re going to have forgotten a box at your old home, or something’s going to get smushed. Try not to take everything too seriously, shake it off the difficulties, and have some fun with it. Once you’re moved into your new home, it’ll all have been worth it.