Hellobee Boards

We just did this. It did not go well unfortunately. It was super confusing for our 3 yr old when half her stuff was at the old place and half was at the new place. Constantly going back and forth was very upsetting for her. It also took us a million more trips in the car than anticipated, but we have a smallish car. It just wasn’t worth the time driving back and forth and loading and unloading a million times. I wish we had just sucked it up and done it all in one day with one big truck. If you do decide to do it, I’d make sure you have enough boxes for all your stuff. We had the foolish idea of only using a limited number of boxes and then unpacking them at the new place and bringing them back. This ended up being a giant hassle and messy because we had no place to put the stuff with no furniture. Good luck with whichever you decide! Moving with kids is stressful!

Last year I asked a similar question

http://boards.hellobee.com/topic/would-you-attempt-a-slow-move

We ended up doing more of a slower move- but only over tb course of 3ish days and it worked well for us.

We did this! We were temporarily living with my parents (for 10 months) while our house was getting built and when it was ready, we slowly moved in. My LO was 2.5 at the time. After we got our keys, we spent the day cleaning the house (wiping down the construction dust, airing out the newly painted smell, etc). Because it was a new construction there was a lot of work to do beforehand ourselves that we opted to do like installing fans, installing blinds, garage doors, toilet paper and towel holders, etc. Then we slowly started moving our stuff in from storage and from what we were using at my parents. We did hire movers to do all of our big stuff like appliances, beds, boxes, etc. After the big stuff move, we were planning on staying at the new house but we had a hiccup with our new fridge and it wouldn't be delivered for another 3 weeks. So back we went to my parents. It was actually a blessing because I was able to take that 3 weeks to unpack (I hate unpacking) and organize things the way I wanted to. LO came and was able to slowly ease into that it was her house. She had been sleeping still in the crib in the same bedroom at my parents but we got new furniture for her room and when we moved we left the crib at my parents (temporarily) so she knew she was moving up into big girl bed.

It worked out well. drove my mom crazy though...she kept asking why we weren't moving out yet

Yes slow move was much much better for us than the one day move we did, both with kids. It was just less stress because moving day with the truck was only big furniture and all the little boxes were already taken care of.

@agold: I don't think it was a typical courtesy, but our sellers were nice people who were in a really unusual and bad situation and we had made some concessions to them on pushing back our move-in date to try to help them out a little (the wife was in the ICU with something absolutely awful and the husband was out of the country on business AND they have a toddler and I think their extended family/friends moved them out). but their selling agent was just super profesh and when the realtors did the walk-through with my husband the day before our movers were to come, she was like, no, this isn't how we do it here, sorry about this--and she hired her own house cleaners to come. they charge $150 so kinnnnddd of a drop in the bucket after the commissions they just made. it made us feel really taken care of and now I'd totally recommend that realtor to anyone who will listen. plus her cleaners did an awesome job and we ended up hiring them to be our regular ladies, so it worked out well all around. but yeah, regardless I'd never do it another way now, you just cannot unpack or put down rugs on a dirty floor, etc.

@LCTBQE: Thanks for all of this info. Terrible situation for the people you bought from. That is so nice for you to now refer that realtor.

@LCTBQE: That does sound like a realtor that is worth their price. I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of people will just move in and not see the dirt, but some people will do as much as they can before they move in. We took 6 weeks between the closing and moving in to do all the floors, rip up carpet, paint the whole house. Even though we had an in town move, we moved in one day, with movers and full truck.

I've learned if you don't do it at that time, it's not going to get done, at least in our family. My husband can deal with renos if he's not living in it, but he can't when he's here.

We started packing unnecessary items about 2 months before our move. Off the top of my head: seasonal clothing, decor, picture frames, rarely iused entertaining items, books, extra toiletries, etc. Once we closed, we had 10 days until official moving day. During that 10 days we brought all the aforementioned items over, one trip per day. I think it helped a bunch, especially bc our friends and family helped us move, no movers.

I had a 1 month overlap (conveniently when I was furloughed at work). What I did was for the first week I got the new house ready (floors redone and cleaned) and packed 90% of the new house. Weeks 2-3 I painted the new house and moved stuff into the rooms that were done. We moved heavy furnature that weekend. Week 4 I unpacked and cleaned the old house. Depending on how much work you have to do, I definitely recommend the slow move.