A Retrospective: Moving

On July 4th of this year, my wife, 3 kids and I moved into a new house. It’s not the first house we owned but with a family the size of mine the smaller house we were living in was just not going to scale with us. My son already took over my basement office for his bedroom and it was literally impossible to do anything in the place without stepping on one of the kids or worrying about waking the youngest up.

We are absolutely in love with our new place, it’s a lot bigger in terms of square footage and the yard is 4 times the size of our old house (yes, lot’s more mowing for dad but I don’t mind). With all the excitement and looking forward to the new place, the harsh reality of actually moving all of our stuff set in pretty quick at the beginning of the month, and shortly after we got everything moved it dawned on me that this would be a perfect opportunity for a retrospective!

What went well?

1. Advanced preparation – My wife is an absolute maniac when it comes to preparation and planning, she had the entire house packed and ready to go about 2 weeks before the actual move. We ate off paper plates and used plastic cutlery and cups for the last 2 weeks in the house. Maybe not the best for the environment but it certainly helped our sanity. This would be my number one piece of advice for anyone planning a large move. Pack early so that you can focus on just the moving part when the day comes.
2. Reserve a truck in advance – And by advance I mean way in advance. I went down to the local Uhaul 2 months before the move date and reserved a truck. The last thing you need is to be trying to track a moving truck down a week or two before the actual move date, that is stress you will not need!
3. Get the biggest truck possible – We got a massive 26 foot beast of a truck, we thought it might have been overkill but it wasn’t. We managed to squeeze just about everything into that house on wheels and it sure beat making multiple trips!
4. Understand what you will need on closing day – This was pretty easy for us as this is the second house we have bought plus our real estate agent is a close friend so there were no surprises going into the lawyers to get everything signed. If it’s your first home, find a friend who’s bought before and get as much info from them as possible, also lean on your real estate agent for some inside information on what you will need for the closing costs etc.
5. If you have kids, get them out of the house for the move – We were fortunate enough that my Mom offered to take the kids not just for the moving day, but for the day before and the weekend after. I can’t imagine what it would have been like trying to move with 3 kids running around, in fact I don’t even want to think about it

What didn’t go well?

1. Not enough help – We both drastically underestimated how much help we would need with the move. We also moved on a Friday which makes it difficult for most of your friends and family to help. This is another piece of advice that I would offer to anyone doing a sufficiently large move. Ask at least double the number of people you think you will need to help you move. This will account for the last minute cancellations that are inevitable.

What to try next time?

1. Get more help then you need – As noted above, the more help the better. I actually ended doing 80% or more of the move on my own (boxes and such). I had a couple of people to help with the big furniture but I sure could have used more help.
2. Hire movers – I doubt we will be moving again any time soon, but mark my words the next time we move I will be hiring professional movers to do the heavy lifting. It might cost a pretty penny but your back (and every other muscle in your body) will thank you for it.

All in all I would say this move was a pretty smooth and successful one. If you have any stories (good and bad) leave a comment!