How technology made moving tolerable

Next week, we’re moving from Connecticut to the northern suburbs of Philadelphia. I’m stressed out, overextended and utterly exhausted, but compared to our move six years ago, this process has been significantly easier.

Technology gets a lot of the credit — from being able to view potential houses and take virtual tours online to ordering packing supplies to signing the never-ending stream of real-estate sale and purchase documents.

Our first taste of this came when we sold our current house at the beginning of April. Our realtor said she’d be adding us to the Dotloop system so we could more easily communicate. I was expecting to have to drive back and forth to the UPS store; spend hundreds of dollars mailing contracts and addendums and coordinating the intricacies of seller assist and closing costs. But, no! Dotloop is an all-digital system that allows you to adopt a signature and sign with just a few clicks. Real estate paperwork has never been so easy.

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Purchasing a new house in the suburbs of Philadephia was facilitated by Dotloop, Trulia, Zillow and Redfin, not to mention the MLS system. And of course, there’s the internet itself. Maps, recently sold comps, Google earth, crime statistics, school reviews and ratings were all at our fingertips.

Click! We ordered a kit of boxes designed to pack all our things. Click! We posted a bunch of our furniture on Craigslist and eBay and just waited for buyers to come take it off our hands. Click! We scheduled utility shutoffs and mail forwarding.

Of course, all of this is made infinitely easier because I work 100 percent remotely. So, I’ll log off this afternoon (after inputting my request for a vacation week through our web-based system), pack this weekend, make the trip, and then log back in on Monday, June 20 as usual.

I’ll admit, moving is still a major pain. But thanks to technology, the pain is a lot easier to handle. See you on the flip side.