subject: From California To Minnesota [print this page] About a year ago, it was time for my family of four to leave California behind for a new home in wild Minnesota. As the main wage earner, we were moving so I could take my dream job working from home. I also had the feeling that we had been in California too long and needed a change. Moving always feels like chaos, but my husband and I were both working and we have two toddlers to keep up with. We thought we could do it all ourselves, but in the end turned to moving pods to save us stress and labor.
The first hurdle was packing up our existing stuff out in California while also finishing up both of our jobs. My husband Todd works part time as an accountant and worked up until the week before we left. He did most of the packing and we had no idea how much stuff we had!
The job I left behind was a stressful, full time graphic design job that sucked up my time. I had so much work to finish before finally getting out of there that I was nearly useless when it came to prepping the house or taking care of the kids before the move.
We have two kids: our four year old Megan and her little sister Joy who just turned one. Todd was their primarily caretaker in California because I worked full time. When he was at his accounting job, we hired a babysitter or took them to a friend's house.
The plan we had was to rent a U-Haul vehicle and move our own stuff across the country. In the end, though, it was very clear that we just didn't have the time or energy to make that happen all by ourselves.
Having moved many times in my life, I thought our plan was perfect. However, I have never moved with kids before and had to come to the realization that it just wouldn't be as easy in anyway. I'm glad we wizened up and realized we needed help early enough to change our plans.
So one day, Todd informed me that we were switching from the U-haul plan to using a moving pod instead. He was primarily in charge of packing so I took his word for it.
On moving day, movers showed up to help load all our earthly possessions into one of their big moving pods. We then waved good bye to our stuff and got into our trusty minivan. A week later, we arrived at our new home having had a lovely cross country journey. All our precious possessions were already there, locked and waiting securely in a moving pod.
