Moving can be an exciting time in a relationship. It can mark the beginning of an exciting adventure, a new chapter in your life, or even a new city, home, or job.  But moving can also cause an enormous amount of strain and stress on a relationship.

Here are 4 tips to help you stay married and get moved:

1. Don’t wait until the last minute – You might have been able to pull off an “A” on Mr. Chung’s science project by waiting until the night before it was due but it’s a terrible idea when it comes to moving.  Slow and steady wins the race – planning, list-making, and proper research typically help to decrease the stress which in turn keeps things from getting hostile in your relationship.
2. Share the Load – Delegate the different responsibilities and tasks involved in the moving process.  Burdening one person with all the moving duties can cause one partner to feel marginalized in the decision-making process. Or the opposite can happen: one partner can grow to be resentful that they are doing everything. If you want to stay married throughout the relocation process remember: sharing is caring!
3. Little By Little – Bribing friends and family with pizza and beer to come over for a weekend packing blitz a couple days before movers show up is one way to get your home packed up and your stuff broken. If hiring a professional moving company to do the packing is out of the budget, then pack one room a night for a week. Every night when you get home from work take an hour or two to pack one room of the house together. This will give you the opportunity as a couple to go through all your possessions, talk about them, tell stories about how you acquired them and stroll down memory lane together. It also allows you to evaluate what you should, need, or want to keep and what to donate.
4. Hire the Pros – Professional movers might be more affordable than you think.  During a relocation, many arguments actually occur on moving day when people are tired, have sore backs, and something accidentally gets broken. For the cost of a couple date nights you can have a professional moving company come in and remove all those potential relationship landmines from moving day. Let them do all the heavy lifting so you have the energy and excitement for unpacking and decorating.