Moving With A Toddler
It has been three weeks since we moved. We did a local move from one suburb to another. I would sum up my experience of moving with a toddler (and two dogs which feels like two more kids) to this: EXHAUSTING. No matter how organized you are, just prepare yourself to be exhausted. Was it worth it? Absolutely. BUT, now I hope we stay put for YEARS!! So, what was helpful and what was a disaster? Let me tell you 🙂
**Keep in mind we moved ourselves without a moving company. If you have the means to hire a moving company: DO IT! lol** We are too cheap, and since it was such a local move I couldn’t justify spending thousands to have someone move us, but if we ever move again I told Steve we are hiring a company! (I say this now, but if you know me I would probably end up moving my stuff ourselves again lol) Anyway….
Helpful Tips:
- Have someone to help “babysit” your kiddo the day of moving so you can be available for, well, pretty much everything lol. We had my mom come stay and it was a LIFESAVER!
- Have all your boxes ready to go somewhere accessible. We had all of our stuff boxed and ready in the garage so it was easy access to move from garage to truck.
- Have a team of helpers. Our friends were ROCKSTARS!
- Have food and drinks ready for everyone. Moving is exhausting and in my opinion, the least you can do is feed them. Which brings me to my next tip: Cater in food!! I had ordered 100+ wings from Buffalo Wild Wings the week before so it was ready for me to just drive and pick it up. Best decision ever!
- Get a bunch of paper plates, plastic cups, silverware and napkins and make sure you have rolls of paper towel/toilet paper and trash bags! I had a bag with all that stuff in it to make life easier.
- Color code your boxes. This made it helpful to organize boxes on the truck, but more importantly later when unloading everyone knows what box goes where.
- Keep out your stroller & pack-n-play and have your “babysitter” keep your baby on their schedule. My mom was amazing 🙂
- Have an overnight bag for everyone ready to go, a cleaning caddy ready for the finishing touches in the morning, and plan to go out to eat for breakfast if able (it helped so we didn’t have to worry about coolers with food).
- Try to plan a closing time for the morning if you can! Helps with babies nap schedule.
- Don’t stress over the food in your fridge and freezer. Just start over. Toss anything that’s not 1/2 full. Trust me. We ended up with only 2 coolers of food.
In the end, moving is hard. Plan to “live” in your car for the day. I would say treat it like you’re going on road trip or vacation.
Tips of What NOT to Do:
- Our moving truck company cancelled on us the morning of our moving day due to the truck getting in accident, this was something out of our control, BUT I bring it up because we picked the busiest weekend to move apparently (all the truck companies we called all told us that) so, don’t move the last weekend of June aka the weekend before the 4th of July! If you get the choice to move mid-week I have heard that’s better than moving on a Friday.
- Don’t forget to put bottles of water in a cooler. We bought a bunch of water, but forgot to make sure it was cold LOL. Live and learn?
- Don’t work on the day you move. My husband and I BOTH worked on the Friday we moved—don’t do that to yourself. Just take the day off people. You’ll thank me later!
Overall, I would say our move went as smooth as possible, minus the truck hiccup along the way. We had a lot of help from friends and family and that’s truly the key! We can’t thank them enough and are so grateful. Moving with a toddler and dogs isn’t fun, but its not the worst thing in the world either 🙂
Much love, Kiersten
