Moving advice, please!

[Oka-san]

So we’re moving to a new house. With a nice kitchen and a great yard!

I’m trying to be as organized and as stress-free as possible about the whole thing. So I’m trying to figure out what we need to do! The negotiations are finished and now we're just waiting to close. We’ve got two weeks until the closing day and I haven’t done anything yet. Hopefully it’s not already too late for everything to go smoothly and stress-free , but we’re sure going to try to use these two weeks well.

So give me your moving advice! What should we do first? Which task was the hardest for you? Which things can wait until later? What kinds of problems did you encounter?

And what about our DD? Are there any ways to help her settle into the new house? She’s 28 months; I sure hope she transitions well. Any advice about how we can help her adjust to our new home is welcome.

Any and all moving tips will be appreciated!

[kdabbler]

Rent a small dumpster. As you pack, you will find stuff that you have no idea why you're holding onto it. Throw it away or give it to Goodwill. That was one of the biggest things I realized when we moved. Just how much stuff we had accumulated. And we were moving from an apartment to a house!

Also, pack your boxes according to the room and label them as such. The kitchen is the easiest to do right away because you can live off paper and take out until you unpack. The hardest to pack are the knicknacks, photos and art because they may or may not work in your new place. After seven years, we're actually getting rid of some of that stuff because we never unpacked it

As for the transition for your daughter, try to find ways to get her involved as much as possible. If you're painting. Let her get dirty and paint her closet. Or let her "help" with the base coat because you're covering it up anyways. You will be amazed how much she'll remember later and feel very excited that she could "help" like an adult. Obviously though, at this age, help might only mean less than 5 minutes of doing the actual activity

[Oka-san]

Thanks for the tips, kdabbler! I’m actually planning to get rid of some stuff, so renting a dumpster is a good idea. Like you, we’re moving to a bigger place, but some of our things are just old and worn out, like the cheap computer table I’m using right now (bought 10 years ago for $79, it’s time for a real desk for this mama!) And it’s interesting that you recommend doing the kitchen early on – I was planning to wait until the end for packing that room!

And thanks for the tip on how to help DD – we’re planning on re-painting two of the rooms, one of which will become her own bedroom eventually (she still sleeps with us in our room, so this won’t happen for a while) and I bet she’ll love “helping” us paint! It will be interesting to see how much of the move she remembers.

I’m planning to really get going on Monday. This will be our last weekend with our home being the same as always, and after that comes some chaos. I just hope we can get through it all without too much hardship!