Mar 236 min read

An Absolute Relocating Plan with Your Kids into Your New Home

Updated: Apr 19

“There is no place like home.”

Home is the best place where we find love, togetherness, happiness, hope, and dreams. A home is a place that every child holds dear and feels comfortable. While finding a new home that suits all our requirements and needs is a challenge, moving and settling is a bigger challenge.

Especially with a kid, you should take it with a lot of responsibilities. We move in to a new home with a lot of new dreams, emotions, and expectations. But to relocate to a new place we need to go through the rough stages of packing, moving and settling.

It might take forever and it can drain the family physically and emotionally. But with our help, packing and settling are going to get better.

Three Stages in Relocating

We will guide you with your relocating plan and make it easy for you and your kids. For any complex task to be done, there are two main things that we need to consider. The more you research, the more effective and perfect will be your plan. Then you can see the success even before you start the execution.

With lots of research and planning, we segregate the process into three simple steps.

Pre-planning or the Prep before shifting
Packing, cleaning, and moving
Unpacking and settling down

Pre-Planning

This is the most important step that if done right will ease out the other steps. Make sure the Pre-planning starts, as early as you found the right house. Having enough time to plan things in advance, gives you room to consider many things. So now, when you plan to relocate with kids, here's a list of things for you to consider.

Visit your new home-to-be and check on every little space before moving in
Talk to your children, ask how they feel, and confirm their love for the new home. Sometimes when kids are worried about fear and a lot of emotions, communication is the key. Make sure throughout this process, you keep an eye on them to make them feel secured and comfortable.
Prior to moving, enjoy a trip to the new house along with your children. Have fun exploring the house along with them.

A lady in a floral shirt holds a child in blue, both gazing out a window at an overcast residential scene with parked cars and houses, reflecting a quiet moment

Walking around the house seriously or expressing your doubtful feelings in front of them will make them insecure about the new home.
Explore the neighbourhood
Plan some time to visit your kid’s new school. When kids feel shy or insecure in changing school, take them along with you for the school visit. Inform the old schools about your relocating plans and get the school records as earlier as possible.
Check on the recreational places, clinics, and child care centers nearby in person.

Packing, Cleaning and Moving

Once the initial hesitations are gone and you get the reassurance across your family on your new home, make sure you start your planning. Organize and de-clutter your belongings and plan how you want your new home to look.

Engage your kids in this process. Getting them to work along with you while shifting and packing will bring in a sense of responsibility. It will also let them learn many new things. To help you with your plan while packing and moving in, we propose some ideas and tips.

Prepping for Packing

Let the first step in planning start with your children.

Get help on childcare or babysitting your kid when you are packing and moving.
If there is no help available to babysit, make sure you leave a room childproofed with some toys to play or if the kid is older get some coloring stuff and books or puzzles to keep them engaged. So that you can work uninterrupted.
Start the planning a month ahead of the shifting, so it can be organized better and you don’t get exhausted.
Write down the list of things you need to pack and move to the new house.
Shop ahead for the to-buy list at least a week before packing.
Spend a day on every room and De-clutter the unnecessary things prior to your packing day. This makes the packing half done.
Plan your mode of transport and finalize on a transporting facility in advance so you wouldn’t have last-minute hiccups.

A child’s imaginative play inside a large cardboard box on a wooden floor, surrounded by more boxes, suggesting a playful atmosphere of packing or unpacking activity

Once the initial prepping and de-cluttering are done you can start with the packing. You can engage any packers or movers to help you in this long process.

But ensure there's someone to give instructions to them and categorize the things so that unpacking or settling in the new house will be an easy one. If you are going to do the packing, make it as organized as possible for easy settling.

Organized Packing

Packing is exhaustive work. It leads to a lot of patience, physical and mental strength. Please take help from friends if you could. Expect the insanity, it helps with less stress. These pointers would help for efficient packing.

Ensure you have the necessary packaging boxes, cellophane tapes or ropes, and markers ready.
Visualize and Plan on how you want to set every room, and how you want your new home to look like. This helps to organize things better in the boxes.
Pack things from one room at a time, so that you can clean the room immediately and saves a separate day for cleaning.

A whimsical pink dollhouse with green frog figurines engaging in human-like activities: reading, celebrating love, observing, bathing, cooking, and navigating stairs, set against lush greenery

Always start with the least used room and move to other rooms. Pack the daily usage wardrobe and kitchen at last, since you will need them until you move.
On every packed box, mention the outline and details of the contents, so it will come in handy when settling. For example mention “Kitchen Utensils” on the box and list the contents as “Pans, Pots, Cookers and serving bowls”.

An Organized packing helps with an easier settling into your new home.

Tips to Remember While Packing

Pack the kitchen separately and move it last to the truck, so you can immediately take them for usage.
Make sure to pack some toys separately to engage your kids until unpacking things in your new house.
Ensure you have enough food made in advance and snacks packed in separate bags for your kids.
Be sure to keep the sharp objects away from kids while packing.

Three moving boxes labeled “Kitchen,” “Dishes” marked as fragile, and “Books,” neatly packed and sealed with tape, ready for relocation, symbolizing the organization in the moving processA child’s imaginative play inside a large cardboard box on a wooden floor, surrounded by more boxes, suggesting a playful atmosphere of packing or unpacking activity

Keep a separate box to pack your child's belongings
Carry a bag with you, to keep the important documents, certificates, first aid boxes, keys, medicines that you might need for a day or two, tools you will need for unpacking and any other necessary items. Make sure you don’t pack them along with other packages.

Settling Down in the New House

Once you have reached the new home, make sure to do a complete check on all the rooms and confirm if the house look-alike your previous visit. In your new home,

Unpack the kitchen boxes for the necessary cooking essentials and keep them ready.
Unpacking and setting up the rooms will take some time. So let the beds be assembled and set for you and your kids to rest whenever needed.
Sort the box based on their room and move the things in the boxes to every corresponding room. It gives better clarity.
Start setting up with your child’s room first

A vibrant children’s room with animal-themed wallpaper, green furniture, scattered toys, a striped rug, and a bookshelf filled with books, creating a playful and creative space

Make sure you have the same things they previously used and arrange a similar setup. Maintain this until they get familiar with the new house.
Set up every room one by one so you don’t mess and mix up.
Take a break whenever it clouds your mind and mood. Spend some quality family time, exploring the neighborhood with them, going for a walk, taking them to a nearby park.
Change the address details wherever required. Make sure you have informed the Postal service of your address change. So that they can help you by redirecting your letters until you have made necessary changes.

Accepting the New Home

Changes are always difficult to accept. As an adult, we ourselves find it annoying at times. Based on our situation and life priorities, we accept the change and move on. But for children, the change is new, and accepting it is difficult.

Especially when there's a change, in the home/living place, in their locality friends and in their school it makes them anxious. A tough emotional connection to the reason for relocating to a new home, that may be a job change for parents, or divorcing parents, or any unfortunate happenings in the family makes it worse.

Hence, they definitely need help to handle the emotional feelings along with the relocation journey.

Throughout the process, make sure you give your attention to them and keep them occupied.
Get introduced to the neighbors and check if they have any playgroup friends or children of the same age so that your children can play together without the feeling of loneliness.
Enjoy some quality time with your kid for a few days, until they feel home. Take them out for playdates and dine-out so they are happy
Be their play-mates until the make friends so they don’t feel lonely and long for their old neighborhood.

Always remember,

Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end. – Robin Sharma

For children, it takes a while to understand the change and then to react for it. Make sure you stay with your children throughout the relocation journey and let them enjoy the process.

A new home is not just made with bricks and beams, its build with hopes and a lot of dreams.