Moving home is a pretty intense task and is made more so challenging if you are moving with a large family. If you are upsizing to a larger home to accommodate your growing family, you may feel like the challenges that you face are somewhat unsurmountable. How are you going to handle packing everything up and complete laborious tasks such as moving furniture all whilst keeping everyone happy, cooperative and well taken care of? Well, fret not, for in this article, we present to you a guide to moving home with a large family. Read on to found out more!
1. Enlist the Professionals
The first and most important point we will stress on is the need to hire a mover. When moving involves a large family, DIY is most definitely not the way to go. Expert movers can assist you in planning an efficient, safe and burden free relocation, leaving you to deal with gathering the family up and getting everyone to play their own part in the moving process. Full service movers will take care of your move from start to finish, providing you with packaging materials such as boxes, tape, bubble wrap and so on, allowing you to spend your precious time looking after your family and taking care of other tasks. With a large family also comes a whole hoard of items to move, so hiring movers to get everything from point A to point B efficiently is your best bet!
2. Keep Everyone In The Loop
The most important thing when moving with a large family is keeping everyone up to date with what is happening. This is especially important when dealing with children or teenagers, as you want them to feel involved in the entire process and you want them feeling like they have a say in what is happening. Relocating can often be a stressful thing for youngsters to deal with and can trigger issues such as anxiety and a feeling of voicelessness, so keeping everyone in the loop and asking for their opinions and suggestions is a must when dealing with a large family. Hold a family meeting, discuss what needs to be done, assign each individual with a moving related task and keep everyone in the loop throughout the process. The more your children know about the move, the less stressed they will feel.
3. Decide On When You Will Be Moving
When dealing with a large family, you have to be cautious of your moving dates. With children of different ages all having different school and activity schedules, it can be difficult to coordinate things in a way that is convenient and cohesive for everyone. When deciding on a moving date, we highly recommend periods of time such as the school holidays, where all the kids will be at home and available to help you out with tasks such as packing and cleaning. Take into consideration that you may have to cancel plans, outings and vacations temporarily to focus on the move, and explain this clearly to the kids so that they don’t feel like they are missing out on anything. After all, you can always reward everyone with a nice weekend out to a theme park or wildlife sanctuary after you have completed the move, and we don’t know any children who wouldn’t jump for joy at that opportunity!
4. Make It A Game!
Let’s be real – packing, cleaning and everything that comes with a big move is far from exhilarating, no matter what age you are. This is why we encourage making it a game when dealing with a large family – you can get the kids to engage in activities such as speed packing, treasure hunting for items and so many other crafty ways of getting the children involved whilst keeping them happy, entertained and stimulated. When these mundane things are made into fun activities, chances are everyone will be a lot happier to help, easing some of the burden and stress off you!
5. Be Flexible
Last but not least, whenever you’re dealing with a large family, you’re going to leave room for flexibility. Having a solid plan is essential, but having one that is adaptable to any unforeseen circumstances is just as essential. This will help you bring order to the stressful and somewhat chaotic experience of moving, and will ensure that you don’t end up panicking if things don’t go exactly as planned.
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We hope that this guide to moving home with a large family makes the arduous task of moving with a crowd slightly easier for you!
