We are moving. It’s a fact, it’s starting this Friday and it is not fun. My whole life is being put into tiny boxes. We are downsizing, it’s simply the state of our world right now. I am looking forward to having a home we can manage physically and financially, that part seems like a bit of a vacation. But to my kids who haven’t been carrying the burden of our current lifestyle it doesn’t seem like a vacation.
So how do you approach moving and the realities of life with kids? I received the best piece of advice over 15 years ago from my Father-in-law. My husband’s family lived in Detroit, Mexico City, Caracas, Venezuela, and Melbourne, Australia during the course of his father’s automobile industry career.
When my husband and I moved our family from Los Angeles home to Portland the kids and I really missed our friends and the sun. I was moping one day and my Father-in-law basically told me to knock it off! He said that in all the moving they did he saw many families face similar moves. The families who were successful and enjoyed their time abroad were the ones where the parents were enthusiastic about the move and treated it like an adventure. If the parents missed home and complained about the differences the kids were miserable.
I am keeping that in mind as we take this step on our family journey. I plan to add to that a level of consideration for my children’s feelings – making sure their needs for privacy, social space, room for hobbies are all considered. But I also don’t intend to indulge them in every whim or over-compensate by purchasing things to make them feel good.
I will be doing a series of blogs about our move and how we are able to make the new house fit the needs of our family who is used to a house almost twice the size. Right now we are weeding out and it actually feels really good! And let me tell you we are going to have one killer estate sale starting the 22nd of March!
A small sampling of estate sale items! Wish you were here?
The thing that has been most disconcerting for me personally has been packing up my office the last couple of days! My bedroom, no problem, my office – yikes! Of course, I have two new jobs this week in addition to our continuing design clients. I am panicking as I pack items about whether I will need them to work on a current project. I am now working from one master file box, a briefcase like bag, a laptop and a pad of graph paper. Who knows? Maybe I’ll find out that’s all I need!
Life is going to be a bit bumpy for the next couple months so I am buckling down and bucking up. But really I am approaching this with my children the way I try to approach all major life decisions: with honesty but not an overload of information that might cause worry. With concern for their well-being, an openness to their input and concerns so we can work to solve them together. After all isn’t that what family is for? If that is what they learn from this move then all the boxes are worthwhile!
Let the adventure begin…I’ll keep you posted!
