Moving with a family can be a disruptive challenge, but with the right attitude and some planning time, you can make your move a chance to bring your clan closer together. Let your little ones know about the amenities available in their new region. Help your spouse remember about the work and play opportunities in your new area. Here are ways that you can help your family deal with the stress of relocating to a new home.
Plan Ahead
As soon as you know that you are moving and approximately where on the map you will land, let your loved ones know. If you work in an office, put in a claim on office paper boxes for uniform storage and stacking on the truck. Look for friends who are putting together a yard sale and ask if you can sell some things there. The more you plan, the better prepared you will be when the moving day arrives.
Make a Map
As you start to sort through possessions and decide what to pack and what you will donate or sell, make sure that your children have an idea of what to expect of their new home. You can make a map of the new space and talk about the built-in shelves where you will store games, about the family room where you will watch movies, and about the garage where the bikes and seasonal items will be stored. If you have a video of your new home from the realtor or the rental manager, be ready to show it to your children repeatedly.
Make sure this map also shows fun activities around your new home, such as the nearest park, movie theatre, ice cream parlor, and nearest pool. You can talk about the distance to their new school and show them the commuting or walking path you will take with them each day. Every little detail you can feed them to foster their excitement really pays off in the overall morale they will exhibit as the big day draws nearer.
Road Trip Your Belongings, Fly Your Family
Hiring help from a company that specializes in the shipping of your vehicles will make your move much less painful. If you’re moving somewhere such as Indianapolis, it may be easier to hire a company that offers car shipping to Indiana to make sure your vehicles arrive there safely. You can also do the same for your home furnishings, and many other items you wouldn’t necessarily think of moving in this way.
Hiring your own moving truck and loading it with the help of friends can cut costs, but a long road trip in an unfamiliar vehicle will not be a healthy introduction to your new home and may increase the number of trips you must take to get to your destination.
Hire a truck driver to get your possessions across the country. When you load the truck, make sure that the last boxes to go on the truck contain
- bedding
- towels
- cleaning supplies
Go ahead and check a few suitcases for your flight. Each family member should have a bag that contains a few changes of clothes, pajamas, and toiletries. As soon as the moving truck arrives, you can do some spot cleaning for your own comfort and make the beds. By packing a few essentials into your moving trucks last, you can capitalize on being able to unload essential items quickly once you begin to unpack at your new home.
Only Move What You Really Love
Now is the time to reduce your possessions to a more manageable load. While free boxes can greatly reduce expenses, make sure you also give each family member at least one plastic bin where they can store the items that absolutely must come with you to the new house.
You don’t have to fill these bins now, but your children will feel more secure about the whole process knowing that they have dedicated space for their really special things. Start a donation box and a trash bag in each space as well. It does well to remind them that this is an opportunity to start over and fresh. Sometimes upgrading certain items in the future is more economic than hauling outdated items with you to create more clutter in your new environment.
Reduce Your Load, Build Ready Cash
You may be tempted to sell items privately on sites such as Mercari, Poshmark, and Facebook Marketplace. If you have time, you can earn more on these sites than you would sell on ThredUp or having a garage or yard sale.
However, private sales mean that you have to store the items until they sell, and this may not work with your schedule. Rather than going to the trouble to host a moving sale, look for:
- group yard sales
- consignment stores that offer pickup
- donation options
Offer the seller a part of your profits or offer to help cover the sales table for part of the day. You don’t need to set yourself up to spend two days clerking a moving sale. You need that time for packing.
Before you transport your items to the sale site, find a thrift store that offers pickup and arrange for them to come to the sale site and take your things away at the end of the sale. If you make some extra money, it will help. Getting rid of extra stuff will help even more.
Moving cross country may be the fresh start you are looking for. By planning ahead, you can move your newly bonded family into a home that is filled with the items that really matter to all of you.
