Married to the Hustle: Faith, Love, and Business for Entrepreneurial Couples

How to Stay Organized and Stress-Free During a Big Move

• Alex & Jessica Fortis • Season 2 • Episode 12

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Moving doesn’t have to be chaotic—if you plan with purpose and lean into the lessons.

Jessica Rosario shares the honest highs and lows of relocating her home and office while running a thriving business. From juggling stress and heavy boxes to maximizing productivity with tools like time blocking, she offers her top five lessons to make any move more manageable. With a heart-centered approach, she reminds listeners how asking for help, letting go of extras, and knowing your timing can make all the difference.

Whether you’re preparing for a move, considering downsizing, or simply trying to purge your space, these practical takeaways will help you stay focused and sane. You’ll walk away feeling more empowered to create space—for your life, your business, and your next chapter.
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Alex & Jessica Fortis

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Maximize your Day podcast, a place for entrepreneurs for building their business, in pursuit of freedom and flexibility to do the things they love. I'm your host, jessica Rosario. I'm a New Yorker turned Floridian who knows a thing or two on how to effectively manage your time while juggling multiple priorities. I'm an ex-corporate leader who walked away from my nine to five-ish to launch and grow my business. In this podcast, I share insights on mindset, business productivity, habits and strategies to help you take control of your to do list and maximize your day, which will help you feel more confident and less overwhelmed and getting more done in less time. I'm so excited you're here. Go ahead, listen in. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I know what you're thinking. I've been under the radar lately, but I have to tell you what I've been doing. If it seems like it's been a while since I recorded my last episode, well, that's because it's been. I've been moving since April. Yes, you heard that right. You know the April showers that bring May flowers, supposedly. Well, yes, I've been moving since April. So here's what happened. I'm the business integrator and strategist for our thriving janitorial business here in Central Florida since 2018. We figured with my coaching experience focused on business startups and strategy, in addition to his construction and commercial cleaning leadership background. It was a perfect business to start from scratch and we're so grateful that we did, because what we started with a piggy bank full of $348 in coin is now a company that employs 18 employees and growing.

Speaker 1:

In March, we received an amazing opportunity to move our home office for this business to an actual brick and mortar office space. As you guys know, the pandemic hit us hard here in Central Florida, really everywhere but businesses that originally had offices. They had to walk away and go all remote or they lost their businesses. So some landlords wound up with this additional amount of inventory of office space that they couldn't rent because a lot of people they had to completely change the way they do business. So here we were, presented with this opportunity to rent some space and I figured you know we have a pretty big house two of our bedrooms were being used as an office space. Why not? It's time to separate and time to thrive, right? So we couldn't pass up the opportunity because it was such a great deal that we just jumped on it. We received our keys March 27th and the work to get the office ready began, oh my goodness. So here's the thing. There's something crazy about doing the work yourself. Is it sweat equity that they call that? Yeah well, it was sweat, all right.

Speaker 1:

Once we moved everything out of the house, we realized that our home was just too big for us. And yes, we then made the decision to put our house on the market in May. So you can imagine how my life has been for the past few months Now. The road ahead of us was not easy, I'm going to tell you right from the get-go. It just wasn't. But we knew it was the right time to let our beautiful five-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath go and downsize, since we've been empty nesters for a few months. And well, the quick process or so we thought was a quick process turned out to be a whole two-month ordeal, with many headaches, many tears, body aches and sweat. We finally closed on our house on June 28th.

Speaker 1:

Now I've decided to gather a few aha moments for you, in the event you or someone you know is or will be going through something similar, in hopes that you could ease your mind a little, to help you remain sane throughout the process. And I'm going to be fully transparent with you. It took me some time to really reflect on what I could have done differently, what I did right and just in general in order to put this episode together that I felt that I absolutely needed to get out to you, because the market right now is crazy, not only for buyers, for sellers, for rentals, I mean, we're seeing things that we never saw before in the market. So I know that somebody that's listening to this episode is probably thinking, oh my gosh, I wish I had known this, or I'm going to prepare for the upcoming months as we could start to make a move. So here you go, I'm going to share the five lessons I learned about moving.

Speaker 1:

Lesson number one block your time. Yes, you heard it right. Time blocking also works with moving, and I know you're probably thinking, of course she would start with that. Isn't time blocking her jam? Yes, it is, but you'll notice that if you simply allot some time to pack, purge or even play, it'll allow you to manage your time more productively.

Speaker 1:

We need to be cautious about our energy levels during this time to prevent burnout, especially if you're moving alongside of a job, raising a family or a business, or whatever the case may be. We all have multiple priorities, you can get burnt out real quick and this can lead to serious procrastination, causing added stress, because you then leave some things until the last minute. Not that I did that or anything, it happened to a friend, no, just kidding. But what I found myself doing was that if I had a meeting canceled or something else that popped up, I would fill that time in with packing and just going crazy in my old house, right? So I realized that I needed to take the time to decompress and even try to squeeze in some self-care, because strictly moving all the time and packing all the time and multiple runs to Goodwill or Salvation Army or the local church to get rid of so many things that we did get rid of, it was just really, really difficult to manage time and run a business and have a family and have a dog and all the other things that were going into play. So once again, lesson one block your time. Lesson two ask for help.

Speaker 1:

And this was a tough one for me because I felt that there's no one better than me to know what to trash, keep, donate or store. Okay, and boy was I wrong. Doing this by myself made me keep more stuff, and when you're downsizing, you realize quickly that everything just does not fit. So asking for help allowed me to work alongside someone I trust to rationalize or, at times, convince myself whether I had to keep some stuff or get rid of it. It helped me stay focused on the things only I could do, while also having the added support to push me to complete one room at a time. Remember, I had a five bedroom, so we had so many different things in every single closet, in every single bedroom that that stuff takes time and it also takes an emotional toll.

Speaker 1:

Another way to ask for help is by delegating what you can. I truly engaged my VA to ensure that she was still showing, that I was still showing up on social media, that she was still posting for me, engaging wherever she could. I also engaged some support in my private coaching program as well as promoted other people's content and events so that I didn't feel like I was strapped for time to be in creative mode, because the content already existed and, of course, repurposing was highly important to me. Why try to be in a creative zone when all I can think of is I need to be out of the house in three weeks, right? So use the tools that you have, ask for, help, delegate where you can, and then you know, the rest is history, because there's going to come a point where you'll be able to close that door right and in our case was the closing of our home and then finally breathe, and then you can be in that creative mode.

Speaker 1:

Lesson number three you only need one. Oh my gosh, I had to tell myself this a million times. I found myself coming across two cake batter mixers, six spatulas, 10 serving bowls, four cupcake pans, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I mean I can just keep going and I convinced myself that one was all I needed and the rest I donated to families, to local charity, to the local goodwill. So just, you know, it was just too much, we didn't have the room for it, it was perfectly working. So why toss it in the trash? Get rid of it. We just don't realize that we always buy extra just because it's on sale, or just because we weren't sure if we had one at home, or even because we expected to trash the old one but wound up keeping both again. Not that I did that or anything. You only need one, I promise you. I promise you.

Speaker 1:

Lesson number four sort your stuff. You know, going through memories and closets and boxes of things, you know, you'll realize that you just have so much to do and so much that needs to be truly sorted. So one of the things that I did was I created piles. Right, I had a keep pile, a donate pile and a storage pile. There was also kind of like a trash pile really, but it was really the three keys. Anytime that you walked into my living room, those three piles of stuff was there. Okay, you'll be surprised how easy it was for us to quickly identify at a glance what was going to our new place, what could we send to storage for now and what we can let go. It was a great reminder of how much we had accumulated throughout the years and how blessed we've been that we can now donate them to a family who needs it more than we did, and seeing people smile it just did something for me.

Speaker 1:

I recall this girl that showed up to pick up a sofa that we were getting rid of and when she showed up there was a pile of Goodwill blankets and pillows and these were like little kid, you know, throws and stuff like that that my daughters felt that they were no longer cool, like you know, like a twilight blankets and hello kitty and stuff like that. They were like, yeah, no, we're too cool for that, we don't want that. So there was this pile of blankets and this girl walks in to pick up the couch. She came with her husband and we said to her you're welcome to, you know, take any blankets or anything like that. These are kids blankets that we're getting rid of. And she pointed to the bag with the pillows and she said and what is that stuff? And we told her those are just some old pillows we're getting rid of and some old blankets and comforters and whatnot. And she turned around and said we just moved here from Pennsylvania a couple of days ago. We drove all night. We have three kids, one of them who's an infant, and we were thinking about going to Walmart and pick up some stuff for them. Is it okay that we take it? What do you think I did? Of course I said yes, right, being able to make an impact on someone. What is that? Saying One man's trash is another man's treasure In this case it was a woman and the fact that we were able to bless that family and how grateful and thankful. She was to the point where she even took photos of the whole setup afterwards and sent me pictures on Facebook to thank me. So that really meant a lot to me.

Speaker 1:

Lesson number five know the seasons. If we were to think about this more thoroughly, we would have never moved midsummer for so many reasons. Although we started in the spring, as I mentioned earlier, this whole process began like end of March April. Never did we think we'd be moving in the middle of the summer. So there were so many reasons why. Number one we're in Florida. It's beautiful here 90% of the time, so we limited ourselves and couldn't even take advantage of beautiful and warm days because all we did was work, pack, unpack and repeat. Number two we were competing with people who move at the end or beginning of the school year, so finding a place to go to was much more challenging than we thought. Number three there were no storage units available because we're surrounded by colleges and the students have placed their stuff in storage over the summer because they have to leave their dorm. And number four, which was even worse for me, it was peak time for our business and it really impacted our bandwidth. We just couldn't find enough hours in the day to get it done. We were not only mentally but physically exhausted. So next time because there will be a next time we'll need to pick a better time to do this. There you have it. So many lessons learned that I just couldn't cover in one episode, but you get the gist of it.

Speaker 1:

And, just to recap, these are the tips that will help you be more productive in the event that you're looking to relocate, downsize or even just purge some of your things. Number one is time blocking. Block your time so that you can be intentional with the work that you're doing. Two seek help or bribe someone, I don't know, whatever works. Number three just pick one. I promise you you only need one of them. If the other one breaks, then you deal with it, but just pick one. Number four sort the piles. If you create the piles, it'll help you get rid of things easier without having to look back.

Speaker 1:

And lastly, number five was knowing the seasons. You know your market, you know your business seasons. You know your market, you know your business, you know your family needs and the dynamics of your household. So know the seasons and know what are the peak times for you personally, that you'll be able to identify what are the best times to make certain moves. Now, what are some takeaways for you? What are some other things that come to mind when it comes to preparing a big move?

Speaker 1:

I can't wait to hear all about it. Just take a screenshot of the podcast episode and go ahead and drop it in Instagram. Tag me and don't forget to hashtag Maximize your Day Podcast. I really look forward to hearing your comments. Until next time, chat soon and don't forget. Just subscribe to the podcast to be notified the second a new episode is released and share with your friends who you believe could benefit from listening. Contact me at JessRosariocom to share your feedback, ask questions and make some topic suggestions. You never know what the next episode is going to be about, until next time. Maximize your day and own it.