Moving with kids is like trying to conduct a symphony while juggling flaming laundry baskets in a house made of cardboard. It can be done—but not without sacrifices. (Mostly your energy, your favorite mug, and the last bit of your mental bandwidth.)
Here's how I’m keeping it together while managing a move, parenting three chaos goblins, and navigating the growing mountain of mystery boxes threatening to form their own postal code.
Step 1: Lower Your Expectations. Then Lower Them Again.
You had plans. Beautiful, organized plans. You envisioned labeled boxes, color-coded tape, and a tranquil relocation that felt more like a yoga retreat than a logistics crisis.
Throw that fantasy into the donation pile.
Some boxes will be labeled “random kitchen panic,” others will just say “uhhh?” You will pack a spoon with socks and a toothbrush in a shoebox labeled "laundry doom." Let it happen. This is not the time for perfection. It is the time for survival and duct tape.
Step 2: Weaponize the Children (With Bribes and Fake Titles)
Children make terrible movers—but fantastic minions if managed properly.
Assign them jobs. Not useful ones, just symbolic jobs that feel important enough to distract them for seven minutes at a time. I now have a "Head of Bubble Wrap Testing," a "Snack Supply Manager," and an "Executive Drawer Emptier (Unsupervised)." They’re all under 10.
Also: snacks are leverage. So are screen time promises, future bribes, and sticker charts you have no intention of following through on. Morality is fluid during relocation.
Step 3: Implement Box Flood Containment Protocol
There are more boxes than you packed. That’s just physics. Boxes replicate like cardboard bacteria.
Set up zones or you will drown:
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Packed and Safe
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Half-Packed and Utterly Useless
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“Why Is This In the Living Room?”
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Emotional Breakdown Corner (Optional, but useful)
Color-code with duct tape, washi tape, crayon, whatever—just create a visual system you can decode in the haze of caffeine withdrawal and back pain.
Step 4: Abandon Meal Planning. Enter Pantry Purge Mode.
Do not grocery shop unless you want to pack a bag of onions and weep into them.
This is your apocalypse pantry moment. Every can of beans, every half-crushed box of pasta, that single sad packet of miso soup—use it. You’re not feeding a family, you’re staging a culinary triage unit.
Accept that your meals will be weird and slightly judgmental. Last Tuesday’s dinner was “mystery grain burritos” with a side of “why are we out of ketchup.”
Step 5: Pack for Future You Like They Have Brain Fog (Because They Will)
Label your boxes like you're leaving instructions for a very confused archaeologist.
Don’t write “miscellaneous” unless you want to hate yourself later. Write things like “Phone Charger, Meds, Toddler Shoes, Emotional Stability (approx).”
Also: create a “chaos survival box.” Include toilet paper, meds, coffee-making devices, and charging cables. Guard it like your life depends on it. Because it will.
Step 6: Accept That Something Will Break. Hopefully Not Your Spirit.
It might be a glass. It might be your last nerve. It might be your toddler’s belief that houses don’t change.
Something will break—and that’s okay. Moving isn’t just moving stuff. It’s shifting your entire sense of home while also pretending you know where the vacuum went. You’ll cry. You’ll yell. You’ll laugh. You’ll eat dinner off a packing box and call it rustic.
Closing Thoughts from the Packing Tape Abyss
You don’t have to do it perfectly. You just have to do it.
Moving with kids is not a milestone—it’s a boss fight. It’s duct tape and bribery and finding your toothbrush in a box labeled “holiday décor.” But it’s also a chance to start fresh, to teach resilience, and to show your kids what it looks like when a parent holds it together with snacks, sarcasm, and pure willpower.
You’re not just moving. You’re evolving. Into someone who deserves a nap, a drink, and maybe a moving company next time.
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