Moving Across the Country with Kids – Timing the Details

One of the hardest parts of moving across the country is trying to figure out the timing of everything.

We don’t really remember everything that happened when we bought our house. It was like 8 years ago, before kids. It feels like a whole different lifetime. And doing all that crap without having kids is completely different than doing it when you already have 3 small children. Plus, where we’re going is a completely different market. So we’re not even really sure how everything works on the buying end.

And now we have to sell a house too!

We have never sold a house before, so we don’t really have a great idea of how the whole process of selling a house works. That was one of the things that could have held us back, even the idea of getting the house ready to put on the market just seemed like it would be too much work. We would never have time for it. I’ll write more about this, but let me just say that asking for help is the best way to accomplish this part.

I’m thinking you just do it all on a wing and a prayer.

You pray that your house sells quickly.

You wing it when it comes to when to quit your job, give notice at daycare, give notice at aftercare, pull your child out of school, move out of your house, etc.

For now it feels like there are a million balls in the air and a million things to think about. It’s exciting. But it’s also a little difficult because it’s just hard to function when you have so much going on in your head.

I just try to take it one thing at a time.

First step, get the house listed.

I mean, there are a lot of steps that need to happen to accomplish Step #1, but I can break all that down to.

What’s the big thing that needs to happen next?

What actions do I need to take to get there?

There’s really no question about when it can get done, so I don’t exactly have to schedule it. Nights. Weekends. That’s all there is.

Sidenote: I was looking for an image to use in this post and the images of happy, smiling, put-together families with children surrounded by an immaculate room with a cute stack of boxes just kill me. Not realistic.