We got orders! How I am prepping our military family for a full DITY or do it yourself move, 9 months out

[00:00:00] Alison: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the show. Okay, so this is going to be a little bit of a drawn out series, if you will, on moving. So I have talked about a little bit over the last year that we are up for orders this summer, And how much it sucks to sit in the awkward in between of are we staying, are we going, where are we going to go, when are we going to go, and just the uncertainty and the instability and the stress that that brings to our military families.

[00:00:39] Alison: So that is what we have been sitting in and just this last week. The slate came out for my husband and we are on it and we are moving back to Washington state. So the good of that is that we've been there before there was we were stationed there during COVID. So there was a lot of stuff that we didn't get to do because the world shut down and loved.

[00:01:11] Alison: the mountains and the hiking and it's truly the summers in the Pacific Northwest. You just can't beat them at all. And I loved the gym that I was working at there before I left. So I'm excited to go back to that stuff. But then there's the, the downside of that. And that is that we were kind of hoping to go back to Virginia because all of our family's in the greater D.

[00:01:37] Alison: C. area. And everybody's getting older. And it is hard to be away from family for so long. So now we've got, it'll be a three year tour. So but the good news is from that is we will be retiring. Yay. So it will be our last our last hurrah, if you will. But what I wanted to do is I thought it would be cool to share in real time, our move and the moving process and what I'm doing.

[00:02:08] Alison: So this will be move number nine, move number nine for us. The last move that we did from Washington to Denver. Was our first full Diddy move or do it yourself move or PPM personally procured move that we did for ourselves and we will only do Diddy's, full Diddy's from now on. So, we've got another full Diddy coming in about nine months.

[00:02:34] Alison: So I thought what I would do is I would share with you what I am doing at the time and I'm going to share this whole PCS with you guys via the podcast in real time and I will try my best to be as open minded as optimistic, but as honest as I can be in sharing the process. So what I wanted to talk about nine months out of a, of a Diddy move or PCS move is what I'm doing.

[00:03:07] Alison: And this is what I'm doing. So we will be moving this summer. We have a report date of August. So What I'm doing now is I am looking at all of the stuff that we have and I am starting to be very, very brutal with what needs to stay and what can go right. And a good way to do that is. If you have moved it into your current home, it never left it's bin, it never left it's box, or you haven't looked at it in the three years that you've been there, do you really need to keep it?

[00:03:42] Alison: Right? So, you gotta just go through and be as brutal as you can with, do I really need to keep this or can I get rid of it? Start giving stuff away. Start selling stuff on Facebook marketplace, eBay, Poshmark, whatever, whatever you want to do, but really start trying to trim down what you're going to move.

[00:04:03] Alison: The one of the really awkward phases again of this stage of where you are is we are most likely going to, we own our home here in Colorado. We are most likely going to be renting in Washington state because. Interest rates are 7 percent and I am about to pay 7 percent interest. So probably not going to be buying anything, which means that.

[00:04:30] Alison: Nine months out, I can't look at houses, right? I'm not looking at houses right now. I can't possibly know what we're going to be going into. So that is very stressful for me because, you know, I have a guest room here, which is fantastic, right? There's a lot of people that don't have that luxury. We have that luxury here.

[00:04:51] Alison: We also have the luxury of a full basement where my gym is. And all of our fish tank paraphernalia is and all of our storages and guess what they do not have in Washington state So all of the stuff that is currently residing in my basement, where the heck is that stuff going to go? Those are the things that are causing me stress.

[00:05:13] Alison: I'm trying to let it go. But anyways, as we get closer and have a better idea of what our home is going to look like when we get there, then you can start making those other decisions. Okay? I'm not going to have a guest room. So the furniture that's in that room has got to go before we move. I'm not taking it.

[00:05:31] Alison: There's nowhere for it to go and things like that. But some of that stuff you have to wait until, Wait for until you're closer to and have an idea of what type of housing situation you're moving into. Okay, so decluttering, purging, getting rid of, selling, whatever you can. The other thing that I have done that I, that was a kind of a project that I took on over the summer is we have a lot of bins.

[00:05:56] Alison: And I know that they are, it is very, very common in military families to have an excessive amount. of Tupperware, Rubbermaid, whatever type of bins because it's just an easy way to transport and protect your belongings, right? So I have various Amounts of them of different types of different kinds of different sizes of different shapes, all of the things, right?

[00:06:24] Alison: And so number one in my type a personality brain, it is stressful for me to see like we have two of the big industrial shelves that we have all of our bins and things like that on. And it's very chaotic when they're all different sizes and shapes and things like that. So what I did when Costco had their sale, cause you gotta shop the sales, but you know, those black bins with the yellow tops, they're really popular.

[00:06:54] Alison: We, what I did is I went and I bought, how many did I buy? I can't remember how many, about like 10 or something like that. And I re, I redid all of our bins. So I took like, and honestly it's mostly holiday decorations and stuff. We have like a camping one and a outdoor. you know, like sports kind of one and things like that.

[00:07:14] Alison: What I did is I took out, I basically emptied all of our old bins and put everything into those black and yellow ones so that it's more uniform. And, and one it might be a little bit OCD for sure. But two, when you're packing your truck and if you're having the military move you, you don't have to worry about packing your truck.

[00:07:33] Alison: They're going to do it for you. But when you're packing your own truck, it really makes it a lot easier to pack. Efficiently and effectively if everything is the same size. So it's, you know, I know a lot of people like to, if you're going to move yourself, I'm just going to get boxes from whoever, wherever, whatever I can get, Amazon, blah, blah, blah.

[00:07:53] Alison: But the problem with that is then you've got all of this random stuff and you're trying to load it as Efficiently as you can into your truck and it's a hot mess So if you can, you know, what we did is we went to U Haul and we bought all of our boxes from U Haul so they're all The same sizes and shapes and so that just makes it a lot easier to load in your truck so I redid those and the other reason that I switched from our other random bins to the black and yellow ones is I saw this really awesome Instagram reel that probably came from TikTok, but it's like a vertical storage system that you can make and you literally take two by fours and you make a vertical box and then you put it You put in horizontal slats that the bins sit on top of so you can make this like if you've got a nine foot ceiling right you can make this vertical box that all of those black and yellow totes can go in vertically stored where they're not sitting on top of each other so they're easy to get in and out of and I'm like holy cow if you can build one vertical unit with side by side right you can have 12 bins you can have 12 bins But it's only six high on each side.

[00:09:10] Alison: And now you've got all this extra space. And so I was like, I'm such a storage nerd. So that made me so excited. I was like, Oh my gosh. So if you're limited on space, that's a great idea to be able to store your stuff in a way that's efficient and that you can still get to impetuses.

[00:09:31] Alison: Okay. One of the other reasons that I switched over to those black and yellow bins. Okay. So switch over the bins. Then the third thing that I'm doing right now is we are coming into all of the holiday seasons. So Halloween, I haven't an obscene amount of Halloween decorations because Halloween is probably my favorite holiday.

[00:09:52] Alison: My birthday is the day before. I think that's why. And what I'm doing is as I'm going through, as we're going through all of these holidays, right? Cause all the major holidays are coming before we PCS. I am being really brutal with my decorations. Do I still really like, I know I've had this for 10 years.

[00:10:12] Alison: Do I still really like it? No, I really don't like it that much anymore gone. It's gone get rid of it so being really brutal with with your going through all your decorations and then and then As I am packing up my decorations after the holiday is over. I am packing it for the move, right? I because like if if i'm packing up a holiday And I know I'm not moving next year.

[00:10:38] Alison: I'm going to pack it differently than if I know it's going to get put on a truck and get bounced around for however many thousands of miles you're moving it. So as I'm packing away my holiday decorations, I'm taking extra care to make sure that there's everything is packaged properly. Everything has got good padding and is stored in a way that it's not going to break.

[00:10:59] Alison: So when it comes to, okay, we're a month or two out from our move. I'm starting to pack stuff down. I don't have to worry about any of my holiday bins because I already packed those when I put everything away. So it kind of eliminates a step down the road. I'm doing it in real time. Okay. All right. So I think that's all I have for you now at nine months out, I will check back in with you.

[00:11:26] Alison: I'm thinking probably. And another few months when I'm about six months out and give you an update of what I'm doing there. All right. Talk to you soon.