Well if you’re new around here, we just moved a few months ago from Kentucky to Minnesota! A cross-country move is no joke and throw in a toddler – you’ve got more fun. Today I wanted to share some tips for moving to maintain your sanity and get through it.
These tips are varying price points or complexity levels – so I’ll just go through my tips and it will make sense as we get into it…. 🙂
If you can – hire movers. And feed them!
Ok guys after our last move we did NOT want to pack or unpack a truck again. Especially when you have stairs! We were so lucky that my husband’s new job paid for moving (and packing). Even if we hadn’t had movers provided, we would have 100000% paid for them. Having someone load your truck professionally saves you time, sanity, and stress.
If you have movers be sure to tip them and feed them. We tipped a total of 5% on each end (divided between the movers). We also provided lunch for each day of moving – packing, loading, and unloading. The movers all said that working with a nice family makes it so much easier! One even commented that sometimes people treat them like the help and ignore them or are rude. So please please be kind, tip, and provide whatever meal you can.
Be RUTHLESS when cleaning and organizing
When you know you’re moving, start organizing that second. Don’t wait until the week before you pack to start bringing things to Goodwill! Go room by room and trim everything down. Seriously be ruthless with your belongings – do you really want to PAY to move an item you don’t want? I looked at all our clothes and things through that lens – would I pay someone to move this? If the answer was no, it was gone.
Get out of the house
We moved into an Airbnb down the street when our house was being loaded, and stayed at my parent’s cabin when the truck was being unloaded. There would have been NO way we could have stayed there with a 15 month old. We started early, ended late, and had so many people in and out of the house. Naps would have been a joke haha.
Unpack ASAP
So I’m not trying to be showy but we had 95% of our boxes unpacked in two days. It made SUCH a difference in our happiness and feeling settled! My parents took my daughter for two days (she napped there, still slept here) so we could just burn though everything. We moved all our furniture, unpacked all our boxes, setup our kitchen, and just moved so quickly. It was a crazy few days but it made us feel at home so much faster.
Be Calm
Things will go wrong, and you will be stressed. Moving is emotional so take a deep breath and realize you can only control so much. Things will break or get dirty. You might forget things somewhere along the way. Or your car will break down the morning of moving and need to be towed to a dealer! (True story with my mom’s car that we had COMPLETELY loaded to drive away!) But in the end it will all work out – trust me!
Looking back our move went so well! Nothing major happened (minus car troubles….and COVID I guess haha). We prepared as much as we could and let the professionals take over where we wanted. Moving is stressful – there’s no way around it – but I did what I could and it was a totally fine experience. I hope the tips above help if you’re getting ready for a big move! They might be simple but sometimes you just need straightforward tips, nothing complex 🙂
