You have accepted the dream job across the country. Or perhaps you have finally sold your house after months of showings, but your new build won’t be ready for another sixty days. Or maybe you are navigating a sudden separation, and you simply need a place to breathe.
Whatever the catalyst, you have entered the “in-between.”
Anthropologists call this state liminality—from the Latin word limen, meaning “threshold.” It is the disorienting phase of a transition where you have left your previous identity or location, but you have not yet fully arrived at your new one. In the context of housing, liminality means living in the gray area between “old home” and “new home.”
We tend to treat this gap period as a mere logistical hurdle. We pack our lives into cardboard boxes, book a few weeks at an extended-stay hotel or a friend’s guest room, and tell ourselves to just push through the inconvenience. But behavioral psychologists and stress researchers know that we chronically underestimate the toll this specific type of displacement takes on our minds and bodies.
The Architecture of Stability
To understand why the “in-between” is so exhausting, you have to look at how the human brain uses physical environments for emotional regulation.
Our homes are not just shelters; they are external hard drives for our nervous systems. When you walk through your front door after a difficult day, your brain recognizes the visual cues—the specific couch, the lighting, the smell of the kitchen—and triggers a parasympathetic response. It tells your body that it is safe to power down.
When you lose that physical anchor, your brain remains in a low-grade state of hyper-vigilance. Living out of a suitcase, eating takeout on a paper plate, or sleeping on a mattress on the floor deprives you of the environmental cues required for deep rest. You are functionally treating your life like an emergency, and your cortisol levels reflect it.
If you look at the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory—a psychiatric tool used to predict illness based on life events—you will notice that the events surrounding a move (changes in residence, changes in living conditions, changes in work) compound rapidly. When you force a brain already dealing with the trauma of a divorce or the anxiety of a new career to also process the instability of temporary homelessness, you create a recipe for severe burnout.
The “Decision Fatigue” Trap
The second hidden danger of the housing gap is decision fatigue.
Major life transitions require you to make hundreds of high-stakes choices. Where should the kids go to school? Should we accept this counteroffer? How do we split the savings account?
When you are living in an inadequate temporary setup, you add a barrage of exhausting micro-decisions to that pile. Where is the Wi-Fi router? Do we need to buy a can opener for this month? How do I set up utilities for a 45-day lease? These seemingly minor logistical headaches drain the finite reservoir of willpower you need to handle the actual life transition.
This is exactly when people make terrible, permanent decisions. Exhausted by the friction of the in-between, they rush to buy a house they don’t truly love, or sign a rigid 12-month lease in a neighborhood they haven’t researched, simply to make the bleeding stop. They trade long-term happiness for short-term relief.
Engineering a Soft Landing
So, how do you navigate the threshold without losing your mind? You have to engineer a soft landing.
The goal is to remove as much friction from the liminal period as possible. This means acknowledging that a major transition is not the time to “rough it.” You need an environment that mimics the functionality and comfort of a permanent home from the moment you walk in.
This has driven the rise of purpose-built, fully furnished flexible housing. Unlike a standard hotel room (which feels transient) or an empty apartment (which requires you to set up utilities, buy furniture, and haul boxes), a proper transitional space is turnkey. The Wi-Fi is on. The kitchen has cookware. The linens are fresh.
By outsourcing the environmental logistics to a managed space, you buy yourself the most valuable asset during a life pivot: time.
Conclusion
The space between chapters shouldn’t be a punishment. It should be a runway.
If you are trying to map out the logistics of this gap period, consulting resources like AVE Living’s Guide to Temporary Housing for Life Transitions can provide a practical framework for what to look for in a short-term setup. The key is to stop viewing your temporary living situation as an agonizing waiting room, and start treating it as a strategic basecamp. When you give your brain a stable, comfortable place to rest, you regain the clarity needed to ensure your next permanent move is the right one.
