(I started writing this post on 7/3/24, just over a year ago. 14 day later I had our 11th baby and forgot all about doing any sort of blogging. So, I'm going to try to finish this now, looking back. We'll see how this goes.)
Moving is a big undertaking.
Moving a larger than normal size family adds some extra fun to the equation.
Moving a large family while pregnant.....that's when it starts to get a little crazy. 😜
But that's what we're doing. And we're not just moving, we're moving across the country!
Knowing I was going to have an extended period of time where I physically wouldn't be able to be doing much packing and would also be needing time to recover after birth, we started packing up pretty early. Way too early in some people's opinion. hehe
The first thing we did was to print up blank monthly calendars so we could write down big things that either were scheduled or needed to get done. Having "time" hanging on the wall really put it into perspective how much time we had left. And we were all glad to be starting early. It was actually quite terrifying to see the time we had left to tell family bye, to pack up our family, to have a baby.....all of it reduced to a few pieces of paper hanging on the wall. I would get a pit in my stomach looking at it. haha!
First, we started packing up books. We love reading, plus we're a homeschooling family, so we have shelves and shelves and more shelves of books. I wish we had counted up how many boxes of books we packed. Cuz it was a lot. While we were packing up our home library, my husband was packing up his office library. Being a pastor, he has quite the collection of books too. 😊
Once we had all the books packed up, we started packing up things we don't use on a regular basis, as well as decorations and pictures. We purged soooo much during this process! Things that were starting to break, were looking pretty worn, or just weren't worth packing up because the move would kill them. Several thrift stores got a good chunk of free money from us haha!! We made use of FaceBook marketplace and tried to sell as much as we could too.
About a month ago, we hired a realtor and when he was over going over things with us, he gave us some really good tips, ideas, and advice on how best to prepare the house for showings. He has a larger family, so having that feedback and how they accomplished their move was very helpful!!
We had set a soft date for listing the house that was three weeks out from that meeting. We weren't tied to that date, but it gave us a very good goal to work towards.
(It is now 7/10/25 and I'm going to try to finish this post.)
Our house became quite empty quickly. It echoed. 'Bout drove me bonkers. We shifted our daily chores around since many of the jobs the kids had no longer existed.
We knew we would be having showings so I went around the house with one of my older girls and we created a list of jobs that had to be done in each room. A checklist to get done for a showing. I was very specific in the list so there was no real need for me to go back and redo jobs. This worked SOOOO well for us!
About an hour before a showing, I would assign kids to go back their beds look beautiful (this helped the middles to really work at making it look nice) and to do certain jobs like moving the small box of toys that we kept out to the garage and taking fans to the garage. The older kids got their personal space ready for showings and then started doing harder jobs. I waddled around overseeing everyone and doing my best to help. Once we had most of the jobs done, I would send the middles and littles to use the bathroom, get their shoes on, fill their cups up and then go outside to play and keep an eye on each other. The rest of us would finish up really quick, then take the handy dandy check list and go room by room, marking things off, and then we would leave to go play at a park or go visit at my sisters house and play with the cousins.
GOD was so gracious to us. We had...I dunno, 12-15 showings I'd guess? Not real sure. Felt like a lot more being so pregnant. I was getting more uncomfortable by the day and I had just told my husband I wasn't going to be able to keep doing this for more than a couple more days or so and our house went under contract.
After Baby arrived we didn't' much for a good month as far as moving goes. We just made it work living life with the little that we had in the house and creating our own fun. Once I was back on my feet more, we got to work again. We had to be out of the house by early September.
Not only was I packing for us to move out of the house, but I was also packing for the kids and I to move to my moms for just over 2 weeks. It was a bit crazy trying to figure it out all. I ended up taking things to my moms that weren't needed. Oy.
But we did it! We moved our oldest back to college. We had a beautiful home birth. We moved our family of 13 out of the house on time. We successfully moved across the country. And now we are fully enjoying our new life GOD has given to us in the beautiful state of Oregon.
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