Moving house when you have little people

Recently we did a pretty huge move. It wasn’t down the road. It was actually to a different prefecture requiring quite a bit of logistics on our part. We also had to do the whole move with our little ones. So here’s how it went down.

There were a few things i was quite worried about. The biggest one being how the children would take the move. I was sure that the first few months would be nothing but crying and screaming for their old home and life. The main reason I thought this would be the case is the lifestyle we had established. Our eldest made very close friends. Everyday she wanted to play with these friends. While she hasn’t cried much about it. The lose of these friends is evident. Whenever she plays with dolls she often names them after her missing friends. When she sees pictures of them she gets noticeably sad. However she is generally happy in her new surrounding and adapted very quickly. There are two reason I think this has been an easy transition.

1. children are pretty flexible and adaptable. A new place in a new town isn’t that different to a new house down the road to them.
2. We repeatedly informed her about the move well ahead of time. I think this actually helped the most. She could easily picture what was going to happen.

As for our littlest one. I think reason one is even more applicable to her. As a one year old, my wife, eldest daughter and I are her world. Where we are she is home.

Overall the move itself  was reasonably painless. This is because we had tonnes of help from our friends and family. This is essential. I don’t think we would have been able to do it without them. In the final few days the friends we made in our little part of Japan took the kids off us while we packed up and cleaned the house. As you could imagine, moving a house with little ones around is a real pain. Their constant need for attention meant packing that could have been done in a day was dragged out to a week or so. Another thing that greatly helped was my wife’s mum staying with us for the final two weeks. She attended to many of the simple day to day stuff allowing us more time to pack, clean and look after the kids.

One day we’ll have to do another move. From this experience I’ve learnt you either need a lot of support or a lot of time. Having both is ideal though.