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I realize it’s not normal to move once a year, and I certainly don’t recommend it, but that has been the story of my life up until last summer. Within a span of four years, we moved five times, including a cross-country move from Texas to Minnesota. (Ok, technically one of those moves was only for a month in temporary housing while we waited for our lease to begin, but it still involved moving a whole lot of stuff and was very inconvenient, so I think it still counts.)
So y’all, I cannot even begin to tell you how excited I am that I don’t have to spend another summer moving. I won’t even know what to do with all that extra time back in my life! Although, with a very busy 15-month old and a 5-year old who loves to be outside, I’m sure I will find a way to pass the time.
Anyway… I don’t know if you’ve moved lately, but if you have, you probably discovered that going through the process of updating your address can be a bit overwhelming, not to mention time consuming, especially when you’re already in survival mode just trying to move all your stuff from one place to another. I mean, I felt like I needed to hire someone just to do all the “office work” involved in our moves.
In all seriousness though, it is a lengthy task to tackle, so I recommend setting aside a large block of time to sit down and try to knock out as many changes as possible at one time. I believe that’s more efficient than just dealing with them as they come up because you’ll already be set up with your computer, phone, notepad etc. , and as you work through your list, you’ll probably find that more entities will come to mind as you’re working on the others. Plus, you will more than likely run into trouble on some of them (i.e. forgotten password or user ID), and have to come back to them later.
Having moved so many times and never one to reinvent the wheel when I don’t have to, I decided to create a Change of Address Checklist, so I didn’t have to start all over with each move. (See below for link to download.) I suppose that’s one good thing that came out of all of these moves!
Even though we’re finished moving for a while (at least we think so anyway), my hope is that I can share this list with anyone who has recently moved or who is planning a move. No one’s list is identical, but perhaps you can start with my template and go from there. And if you choose to use my list and find that I’ve left off something fairly common to the average person, feel free to leave a comment. I may even update the template and re-post it.
Thanks for reading, sharing, and commenting. And if you’re gearing up for a move, good luck! I can honestly say, “I know how you feel. I’ve been there…like four times within five years!”
Download the Change of Address Checklist as a PDF or as an Excel spreadsheet.
Quick Note Regarding Checklist: As I mentioned before, this list is just a starting point. You will definitely need to tweak it to fit your individual needs. You will notice that there is a colon (:) after many of the generic names with space for you to fill in the specific name of whatever entity you need to update. Since I really wanted to keep the list to one page, you may need to use some of the extra lines at the bottom or even a second page to include everyone on your list.
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