Is It Hard To Move A Large Family Across The Country?

Moving a large family can be a lot trickier than just moving one or two people in the first place, but when you’ve got an entire nation to cross? It can be your own little personal hell! It can be the most stressful time in your life, there’s no doubt about that, but you might just be suffering with the effects for years to come. 

Which is why it’s important to know the unique challenges of moving so far with so many people in the back of the car. After all, fitting all of your family neatly into a 5 seater vehicle is never going to work out, and the mileage of going back and forth isn’t a practical idea for anyone to undertake. And that’s just the main journey you’ll have to think about, never mind any preparation you’ll have to go through for it as well.

Thus, let’s examine some of the main problems (and their solutions) of moving across the country with more than 5 people in tow. If you’re worried about the logistics of such a move, seeing as you’ll need to try it out yourself in the near future, read through the points we’ve listed below.

You’ll Need to Come Up with a Strict Schedule

A schedule is absolutely necessary during a move like this. If you don’t have a schedule to work off of, there’s no guarantee you’ll be done with the move in time – and when you’ve got more than 5 people to coordinate all at once, you’ll be doomed to fail.

You’re going to need all hands on deck at a time like this. Everyone in your household needs to do their bit, to ensure the packing is completed and the house is clean. For example, if you’ve got the gas and electricity company to negotiate with, you don’t want to have the burden of knowing you’ve still got a kitchen to pack up as soon as you get off of the phone.

So it’s key to come up with some kind of plan, to make sure everyone knows what they’re doing, and when they need to be done by. Most of all, be sure to keep your kids informed on what’s going on. If you were suddenly uprooted and forced to move thousands of miles away, you’d be very angry that no one even told you why, or how you could pitch in to help.

Finding a Coordinated Time to Quit Work is Tricky

How many members of your family (that are living with you) currently have jobs? If there’s 3 or 4 adults in the house, and all of you are receiving some form of income to pay for it, it’s going to be a challenge to come up with the right time to hand in notices. Even if it’s just you and your partner, because all of the other household members are young children, this can still be tricky to pull off right.

After all, you’re still going to need to receive some of that incoming money, especially if this is a sudden uproot that you had little to no emergency savings for. There’s also the fact that everyone is going to be working at a different job, with different rules for needing to quit. At the very least, make sure everyone who needs to know about the upcoming move is properly informed ahead of time, so they have at least 2 weeks clearance on their side!

And seeing as you’ll be moving to a whole new part of the country, you’re going to need to leave in good enough faith to score a reference out of your previous employer. If you want to secure a job as quickly as possible on the other side (and you haven’t been able to already), you’ll need their professional opinion on you to back you up.

Moving More Than One Car is a Challenge

And finally, if you’ve got more than one car to go thousands of miles up the coast, who’s going to be able to drive them all at the same time? If you have a car of your own, and so does your partner, you might think it’ll be easy to hop behind your own wheels and speed off. But if you’ve got a transport vehicle either leading in front or following on behind, and then you’ve got another car sitting in the driveway (because your parents currently live with you too), can you be sure your mind is going to be focused on the road?

When you’ve got family in 3 or 4 separate vehicles, or you’ve only got 1 or 2 people able to drive them, your head can be all over the place. You’ll be worried about the boxes filled to the brim with all of your things in the back of the moving truck, and you’ll be worried your elderly mother is going to somehow get lost along the way. You might even have to contend with non-stop questions from the backseat drivers of your family, such as your kids who want to know why they couldn’t ride with their other parent, or your sister in law who thinks you should have taken the turn you just passed.

So it’s a good thing vehicle transport exists out there – you can take your own car (or ride in the moving truck itself), and sit securely in the knowledge that all of your other (valuable and not yet paid off) vehicles are being moved by professionals who know the roads better than you do.

It can be hard to move your family across the country, there’s no doubt about that. There’s a lot of to do to get through, and there’s quite a few considerations you can’t afford to forget about. But most of all, you want your family to be happy with the move itself, and you don’t want tears and tantrums throughout the entire process. Kids have lives of their own too, remember that!

Credit for free photo: Orlando Leon on Unsplash