Moving Home Doesn't Have to be Stressful

By Annelise Grant

Marblehead – Moving is one of the top three most stressful life situations (behind only death and divorce according to moving.com). The housing market is beginning to show signs of a turnaround, which means more people will be taking on this headache now than we’ve seen in quite some time. Factor in the many empty-nesters and aging baby boomers looking to downsize their homes, move to assisted living facilities or just sell their homes and move to a new location, and we’re bound to see plenty of folks looking to streamline and simplify their moves.

Karen Rosenberg is a busy mom of four children. With a husband who works many hours per week (and often on weekends), when it came time for the Rosenbergs to move from Marblehead to Swampscott, Karen knew she didn’t have the time or enough hands to handle packing their home by herself. Luckily, Karen knew of a local business, Women on the Move, a moving concierge company based in Marblehead, that could handle all the details of moving for her, from packing the entire contents of their home to helping to decide what to move and what to get rid of, as well as coordinating with the movers and even unpacking the boxes at her new home!

“To try moving our family of six on my own would have been absolutely impossible. We’ve used Women on the Move with a few of our half-dozen moves over the past several years, and I have to say, the process is utterly stress-free. I didn’t have to think about any of the details that can easily overwhelm a person when moving. They really do cover it all, from packing to working with the movers to helping me determine where to put things in our new home so we could settle in easily.”

Annmarie Linnane of  Women on the Move has made it her mission to remove the stress involved with moving. “In my past career in pharmaceutical sales, I moved 14 times in eight years. Each time, I needed to ensure a smooth transition so I could continue to focus on work. I didn’t have the luxury of taking several weeks off to pack, move and settle in to a new home. Often, the process was stressful, hurried and disorganized, to say the least.”

Linnane has harnessed that experience and leveraged it as a cautionary tale of how not to move. Women on the Move removes much of the stress of moving by offering services such as packing, coordinating with haulers and movers, unpacking and setting up a new home so that clients can leave for work from one home in the morning and return that evening to a new home with dishes and clothing put away and beds made.

Linnane prides herself on being very focused on each individual client. “Each home, each family, each move is different,” she says. “We really try to make everything as streamlined as possible for each person we work with.”

Observing a move, it is easy to see the experience that Linnane and her team bring to the table. Working swiftly, the Women on the Move team consults with the homeowner or other responsible party on exactly which items are to be moved, how they will be set up at the new home and any other details. Linnane and her chief coordinator work diligently to honor any requests, but also create a rapport with each client so they can comfortably offer advice and guidance on things that might either be too overwhelming to those who are moving.

“Obviously, for some people, moving is a happy occasion,” Linnane says. “But there are also times when moving is a hardship. Perhaps it is a result of a death or divorce, or someone who cannot live on their own anymore. We try to weigh each situation carefully and help them make the best decisions they can so they feel as much at home in their new place as they have in the old one.”

One large area of clientele for companies like Women on the Move are those moving from a large home to an assisted living facility. Linnane has arrangements with some of the area’s facilities where a credit toward her services is included in move-in packages for new tenants.

Like many people with aging parents, Irene Kastrinakis worried about her mother’s safety living alone in the large, multi-story home she’d lived in for 36 years. To her, it had become clear that moving her mother to an assisted living facility would be a very realistic possibility.

The whole process of moving was difficult for Kastrinakis and her mother. Known as the sandwich generation, many people between the ages of 40 and 60 are faced with not only caring for their own children and grandchildren, but are in a position where they are often making decisions for their aging parents as well. According to the Pew Research Center, just over 1 of every 8 Americans fits into the sandwich generation, in addition to between 7 to 10 million adults caring for their aging parents from a long distance. US Census Bureau statistics indicate that the number of older Americans aged 65 or older will double by the year 2030, to over 70 million.

“Of course, convincing my mother to move out of her home was a project in and of itself,” Kastrinakis says. “Not only would she be moving, but she’d also be downsizing, which meant she needed to determine exactly what she’d take with her to her new place. My mother was extremely wary of a bunch of movers tromping through her house, throwing her things in a box and shipping them off. What we found by using Women on the Move was exactly the opposite.

 “My mother already felt uprooted at the age of 86, so ensuring a smooth transition was absolutely critical. The process of using Women on the Move was priceless. On moving day, we took her to get a manicure and to do some shopping, and when we were done, we took her to her new home and it was already set up! Her drawers were exactly as she would have arranged them and her kitchen was set up to mimic her old set-up as much as possible.”

As a member of the National Association of Senior Move Managers, Linnane gives special focus to those who are undertaking a move later in life. “There are so many factors to consider in these situations,” she says. “Adult children may not live close by or have career or family obligations that prevent them from being as hands-on as they’d like to be. Also, since many older adults making a transition have not moved in decades, there are downsizing considerations to be made. We try to bring an outside perspective that is sensitive to each circumstance.”

Linnane works hard to ensure that her company is as professional and personal as possible. There is rigorous training for those who are on-site to do the moves, and each new hire spends considerable time both in the office and the warehouse as well, to ensure they understand the entire big picture of each move.

“There are countless people who can benefit from using a moving concierge,” Linnane says. “Anyone from a busy executive relocating for work to families with children to those who are looking to downsize really can benefit from letting the experts take the stress out of moving. Transition is often a trying time, and dealing with the logistics is something that can easily be delegated to us. If we can help relieve that stress, we’ve done our job.”