Remember the days of tying everything down to the back of a truck and heading off to destinations unknown with nothing but a compass, a canteen and an oil lamp to help you blaze your trail? No? Oh, right. Of course you don’t. Because it’s the 21st century.

Moving has never been a particularly fun process, but as with anything, refinements over time have made it not quite so terrible. And nowadays, no matter what obstacle you’re facing, if you need a solution for something… well, it’s nearly certain that there’s an app for it. Oh, the times they are a changin’, and we couldn’t be happier about that. Here, a bevy of apps to make your move a little easier.

Apps for Figuring Out a New Floorplan

One of the toughest parts of a move — once the actual move is complete, anyway — can be the act of figuring out what goes where in a new place where the floorplan is completely different from the last one. Try as we might, the age-old practice of eyeballing our soon-to-be new home and taking a couple of pictures with a smartphone during a walk-through doesn’t really cut it when it comes to fitting that monstrous antique Chesterfield sofa into ye olde efficiency walkup.

So, enter the apps! Among the best are SmartDraw, Floorplanner, and SketchUp; each gives you the opportunity to virtually create your new space to scale and see what pieces of furniture actually work in it without having to turn them upside down and sideways. Yet another example of the ways in which an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Apps for Checking Out a New Neighborhood

Never underestimate the power of Google. While it’s a no-brainer to look up particular neighborhoods and addresses to get a sense of what they’re like, once you’ve narrowed your search down to a few key places or perhaps even signed a lease or mortgage on a particular home, there’s a simple trick you can use to visit the new place (and everything around it) whenever you’d like to help you get familiar with the neighborhood. Wondering if it’s genuinely possible to walk to work, the gym or the nearest coffee place?

Wonder no more. Go into Google Maps, search an address, select the yellow human icon at the top of the zoom feature and drag it into the image window. You can literally (virtually, anyway) walk up and down every sidewalk in the neighborhood by using the arrows, stopping to check out sweet local corner stores (score!) and sketchy, scary alleyways (yikes). This is particularly useful prior to a long-distance move, when there’s typically not much time for exploring the vibe of each neighborhood under consideration. Just be sure to double-check the date stamp at the bottom of the image to make sure it’s relatively recent.

And for an expert view on how walkable the local community is, you can always check out its walkability level with the official Walk Score app, a favorite tool of public health officials. It offers transit reports, too, to let you know if local traffic is soul-crushing, blissfully nonexistent or something perhaps livably in-between.

The Ultimate App for Moving, Plain and Simple

It’s possible we’re a little biased here at Moveline, but we really are doing something that’s never been done before: leveling the playing field between consumers and moving companies. By demystifying the move inventory process and obtaining quotes from several reputable moving companies on behalf of each of our customers, we simplify the once-frustrating process of obtaining competing bids that generally ended up looked nothing like one another and only created confusion. And we offer a few other applause-worthy headache busters too.

By assigning a “Move Captain” to each of our customers, we give them a personal point of contact to oversee every aspect of their move, from a video chat session to determine how many boxes are needed to a payment process that’s easy as pie (and not full the kinds of surprises that sometimes occur when working with a moving company one-on-one). And just like every other app on this list, it costs a glorious zero dollars.
Who said the best things in life aren’t free?

If you’re ready to get started with Moveline, visit our homepage here.

Check out more tips for planning or preparing for your move from Moveline, a radically easier way to move.