1. Talk to Your Children
As a mom with two kids, I can personally attest to the fact that the hardest thing about a move is explaining that you are moving to your kids. Your children may be young but they still have lives. Your children may enjoy their current school and have friends that they may not want to leave. Your home is also already filled with memories of their childhood and that can be hard to let go. Convincing your children to accept the move can be tough. The best thing that you can do is have a family meeting where you sit the whole family down to explain that you are moving. Be sure to explain to your kids exactly why you are moving. Treat them like adults and try to reason with them. Don't be surprised if they are upset about the move at first. That's normal. Reassure them that the move will turn out okay. Try to let your kids know that the move is an opportunity to experience new things.
2. Get Rid of Unneeded Items Before Moving
Take the initiative to get rid of your unneeded items BEFORE you move. Your new place will already be extremely cluttered with moving boxes. Don't take anything that you would just throw out later after unpacking! Encourage your kids to clean their rooms and get rid of things that they don't need. You can donate old items like toys or clothing. Personally, I thought that a yard sale would be a great incentive to get my kids to get rid of the things that they didn't need. I allowed them to keep the money from the yard sale which made the cleaning process more exciting for them!
3. Research as Much as You Can
I personally decided to move into a larger apartment a few hours away because my job needed me to relocate. I couldn't afford a home and I didn't want to take out a mortgage loan. Make sure that you know what your necessities are when looking at new places to live. Think about what would make your life easier. The first apartment that I lived in had a shared washer and dryer area. It was located on the bottom floor of my apartment building and I lived on the third floor. It was hard carrying loads of clothes up and down the stairs. I often asked my husband to help me when he was home from work. However, I didn't like relying on him to be able to do laundry without getting physically tired.
When I had children, I was doing even more laundry than before. The loads became more frequent and as I got older, I started being unable to carry them as easily. Because of my personal experience, I used a washer and dryer as part of my criteria for the apartment search. The only apartments that I looked at either supplied an in-unit washer and dryer or had the hookups for a washer and dryer in the apartment. You can filter your search based on price.
I also based my search on how many bedrooms I needed. This narrowed down my search further. You can also look at the square footage of the apartments in order to estimate just how big the apartment will be. I wanted a roomy apartment so I was looking at the highest amount of square footage that was available for my price range. After finding a few suitable apartments, I narrowed them down based on the distance from schools. Having a school nearby would make the daily transit to take the kids to school easier.
4. Fill Out an Application and Reserve Your Apartment
Once I chose an apartment in the San Jose area, I had to reach out to the landlord of the apartment. I filled out an online application because I was hours away from San Jose. I was unable to fill out an application in person. I paid a 50-dollar application fee (25 dollars per adult in the household) which is normal. Some application fees may be higher. About three days later, I received a phone call letting me know that I had been approved to rent an apartment. I immediately sent a deposit to reserve our new apartment to be able to move in. The landlord let me know that the apartment would be ready in about 3 weeks for us to move in.
5. Keep Your Family Informed
Let your family know how the moving process is coming. I made sure that everyone in my family was on the same page about the move in date, how the move would work, when our possessions would need to be packed by, and anything else that came up during the moving process.
6. Get Your Kids Excited About the New Place
A way to get your kids feeling good about the move is by including them in decisions. If you are still choosing where you are going to live, you can help your children choose. Narrow your choices down to a few suitable places and ask your kids which one that they like best. You can also print out a floor plan and allow your kids to choose which room will be theirs. I let my kids draw how they wanted the furniture laid out on the floor plan. It may not be the most accurate floor plan. It will probably need to be modified when you see how much space you actually have. However, letting your kids make plans for the move makes them feel more involved in the changes in their lives.
7. Choose a Long-Distance Mover
There is one choice that you can make during the moving process that will make your life much easier. I was moving hours away and even with my husband helping, the move would have been exhausting if we had moved all of our furniture and items alone. It is a great choice to have a long-distance moving company, like San Jose Local Movers, help you move. A moving company takes away the stress of having to move hours away with children AND having to do all of the work yourself. We were also able to get a quote over the phone and schedule the move two weeks in advance. Hiring a moving company made it so that we were prepared to move ahead of time.
8. Let Your Kids Say Goodbye to Friends
A great idea to help your children say goodbye to their friends is to have a going away party. Be sure to show your kids how to stay in contact with their friends. Make an email for your kids and show your kids how to use the email. Help them memorize a phone number that their friends can use to get ahold of them. Make copies of their contact information so that they can easily hand it out to their guests at the going away party. Saying goodbye to the people that you care about is never easy but throwing a going away party allowed my kids to get some closure before the move. It also allowed them to gather all of their friends in one place in order to exchange contact information before the move.
9. You Are Ready to Move!
On the day of the move, try to make things easier on the movers. Some moving companies have packing services. However, if you are packing yourself, make sure to have everything ready to go for the movers. Everything should be packed before the movers arrive. The less time that the move takes, the less money that you pay. The movers will do the work for you so that you can just focus on transporting your family to your destination. I recommend having a separate bag of essential items set aside that you might need on the first night at your new home. You won't be able to unpack everything on the same day. Having a separate bag of essentials allows you to have everything that you need for the first night without having to dig through various boxes to find them.
