Let’s face it; a move is a stressful thing. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from – there is just something naturally difficult and nerve-wracking about uprooting yourself from a place that you’ve been settled in for any length of time.Even if you’re just moving to an identical house or flat down the road, you start to run up against a whole variety of problems which you never expected to find yourself confronting – things which didn’t even cross your mind when you first decided to make the move. Suddenly getting your bed or sofa up those stairs seems like it would take 10 men and divine intervention. Or maybe you’ve just realized that your car is too small to fit that prized grandfather clock of yours into, without risking irreversible damage. Add to this the stress that you may already be facing from work, your personal life, and the million other things which take up our attention during the course of the day-to-grind, and the whole thing quickly begins to seem like more trouble than it’s worth. But there’s no going back now – you’ve put down your deposit and you need to get your stuff across somehow.Luckily for you, you don’t have to go it alone. There’s an entire industry which exists for the sole reason of taking this particular load off your mind, and letting you focus on handling the more enjoyable parts of a move (like, perhaps, thinking of all the nice new things that you want to decorate your new home or apartment with – or weighing up all the different benefits of putting a pool table in your living room.) This industry is, of course, the removals industry, and although it’s usually true that money can’t buy happiness, I’d argue that you can certainly purchase yourself some peace of mind and a good night’s stress free sleep, if you’re willing to fork over the cash to get a professional group to handle your removals and storage. But there’s the catch: Money. Most of just us are not in the right state of mind to go on a spending spree when we’re already in the process of shelling out a considerable amount for a new home, or a security deposit, or for a new set of lounge furniture which fits into our new living room. Especially with the current economic climate it can seem almost wasteful to many of us, to pay for someone else to do our removals. It can’t be that hard to do it ourselves, can it?Here’s where I have to argue against what might seem like “common sense.” Firstly, consider this: You’re paying a “one-off” fee for a “one-off” service. What may seem at first like a lot of money to spend, starts to look a lot more reasonable when you put it in context: This is a service which you’re likely only going to use every few years. It goes along with a very specific process and it has very specific benefits. It’s an investment more than anything else – and the benefit for you is that you can better focus on the important details of how you want your life in your new home to unfold. Secondly, think about what you end up sacrificing if you decide to move your belongings by yourself: Time quickly disappears, important details are often overlooked as you scramble to get everything marked, packed, and hauled to the new location. Fuel costs you money, forcing your belongings to fit into your vehicle risks them being damaged, and most importantly of all your attention ends up being completely absorbed by this one task – meaning that you are far more likely to overlook some other important details. If your mind is completely occupied with moving your stuff between homes, you may just find that you end up in a house full of boxes with no idea of what to do with them all once you’re there.