Our Move by the Numbers + A Few Moving Tips

To give a little bit of background on Joe and I, we've been together almost six years, and in that time we've lived in seven places. Five in Southern California, one in the Bay Area, and now in Sacramento. No, we're not a military family, and no, we're not on the run from the law ;) The first three moves we did completely on our own. No movers, no big trucks, just some helpful friends, Joe's Tundra, and my Jetta. Then we eventually accumulated more furniture, got rid of Joe's truck, moved further away, and just wizened up in general and started hiring movers. So, so SOOOO worth it.

During our most recent move I heard lots of "you must be a pro at moving by now." While that's definitely not true, I do think this was our least stressful move yet. All things considered it should've been the most stressful because we only gave ourselves three weeks to not only find a new place more than 100 miles away from where we currently lived, but also because Joe was gone 10 of those 21 days. He literally got back from his second work trip 18 hours before the movers showed up. I did 80% of the packing in the five days beforehand while Joe was nearly 3,000 miles away and Ez and Declan were ransacking the already messy and disorganized maze of boxes that was our living room. And you know what? That actually took a lot of the pressure off. Everything didn't have to be perfectly organized before it got packed away. It just had to make its way to a box. That's it.

Aside from focusing more on getting it done than getting it done perfectly, here are a few other moving tips I've picked up along the way:

- The kitchen is a beast. (Especially if you just recently received lots of lovely kitchen-related wedding gifts). It takes a looonnng time to pack a kitchen well, so that breakables don't break, and it took us a minimum of 15 boxes this time around.

- Bubble wrapping is very time consuming. Do NOT wait till the last minute to pack your breakables. Knock those pesky items off the list right away.

- A few moves ago when I was still a rookie I packed up all the clothes hanging in my closet. Turns out if you hire movers that's a complete waste of time. They showed up with wardrobe boxes and just took all my clothes right on the hangers and then even unpacked them straight into my closet at the new place for me.

- Same thing if you happen to keep a lot of your stuff in storage baskets. Taking stuff out of baskets to put them into boxes is a wasted step. The movers just shrink wrap them and load them straight into the truck. Easy and done. Thankfully we're huge fans of storage baskets and that saved us a ton of time.

- Even if you don't have a ton of time, purge whatever you can. We took about an hour to go through all the accumulated paper and junk mail that had piled up on our counter and tossed 80% of it. Same with clothes and toys. As I was packing I'd have a separate bag for stuff to donate and we wound up taking two trunkfuls of stuff to the thrift shop. It's very freeing to know you're letting go of stuff that's just wasting space.

- Get a babysitter on moving day! This is the first time we've followed this advice and I'm not sure how we survived past moves with kids underfoot.

- If you have something completely irreplaceable that you love, take it with you in your own car if possible. No matter how careful we and the movers are, something always breaks. It's unfortunate but true. (This time it was the TV, which was exceptionally devastating for Joe and Declan.)

- And above all, just know that somehow, someway you'll make it over to the other side, feet propped up on boxes, a glass of wine in hand, and be able to say to yourselves, "I can't believe we pulled this off." Best feeling ever ;)

More home details and photos coming soon! We are this close to having everything unpacked and Ez and Declan have been just as enamored with the unpacking process as they were with the packing process. Bubble wrap, empty boxes, and packing paper everywhere...what more could a little boy ask for?