Moving with Preschoolers and an Infant

So you have decided to move.  That is awesome!  Oh but you have kids.  Well that makes it a little harder.  There are some things you can do to make this process a little easier and somethings you really shouldn't do.  Here are a few of the things I learned, some the hard way.

 Six years ago my husband and I decided we were going to move.  After 3 kids, lots of open houses, 4 different towns, and 1 failed offer we finally found a house.  This past weekend we moved in, okay so our garage is full of boxes but we can live in the house!  It was a crazy weekend but we were able to get through.

Before you list your house for sale get most of the toys out of the house.  I went through all our toys and picked the ones that they played with the most to keep in the house.  This will also make it easier when you are cleaning for open houses, they don't have as much to make a mess with!  On the day of the open house find something fun to keep them occupied.  We have a local children's museum that was great to keep them distracted.

Once your house sells comes the packing.  Pick a room and pack it.  I tried to pack the rooms where I could keep an eye on them.  If you need to have a babysitter come and watch your children while you pack rooms.  We had someone come to our house and watch our boys while I packed and clean their rooms. 

The easiest thing to do is to have someone watch your children.  For us our parents switched off watching our 2 oldest children.  I used a baby carrier for our youngest.

My son was so disappointed that he was not able to help us move so I wanted to do something special for him.  I had special pajamas for their first night in the new house and a Lego sets to help keep them busy while we were busy putting things away.

Back to the move.  So the day of the move I strapped my son onto my back and got started helping with the moving.  I will be honest I learned that moving while wearing an infant was not the easiest thing to do.  I felt like I did a lot of directing and not as much moving.  This also made it so that my son did not want to be held by anyone but me.

After we got most of our things to the new house I took him out of the carrier and let him play on the floor.  I learned through a very unpleasant experience to make sure that there is always someone watching the children.  It is easy to think someone is watching a child and they think someone else is watching. 

Include the kids in the process.  Sure they may not be able to help you move the couch into the house but they can carry the cushions!  They feel a part of the process and this can make things a lot easier.

My final piece of advice is when you are deciding what toys to keep and what toys to donate make sure you do this when the kids aren't around.  It is easy to look at a toy they haven't played with in a while and decide that you are going to get rid of it.  The problem is while you see a toy they no longer like they see a toy they forgot about and love once again. 

So here we are in a new house with a garage full of boxes.  I have 30 days to clean out our garage or Goodwill is going to get a huge donation.  Wish me luck!