After a couple of long but fast-moving weeks of packing and preparing to move from our home on the peninsula to Seattle, the day finally arrived: we officially moved out of our house. Saying goodbye was hard, but we’re treating it as a “farewell, friend” rather than a final goodbye. Every home we’ve lived in remains part of our story and our fond memories.
Update: I wrote a two-part series with top tips for preparing to buy a new house and for moving that you might find helpful.
This house will always be special. Living here taught me so much about creating a home I love and finding contentment wherever I am. I’ll continue to share favorite rooms and projects from this house on the blog, and this home is also featured in my next book, The Inspired Room, due out in November. I wrote about my decorating process and design tips and included many photos of this house for the book. I can’t wait for you to see it.
Though we’ve physically left the house, it’s not a final goodbye—more of a see-you-later.
Moving out without having closed on another house first felt strange. We’ve always moved directly from one home to another before, which made things simpler: move belongings from Home A to Home B. This time we didn’t have Home B lined up, so we had to figure out temporary options—and fast.
- At first I imagined many less-than-ideal scenarios, lying awake and wondering how we’d manage an “in-between” move.
- Should we rent storage and move everything into it? Would one unit be big enough? How many would we need?
- How would we get everything into storage without hurting ourselves?
- And moving twice—into storage then into a new house later—sounded exhausting.
- Renting a temporary house was expensive in Seattle and required a commitment we didn’t want, especially with dogs.
- Another wild idea was selling most furniture and carrying only essentials in backpacks—tempting, but unrealistic.
With a week to get out, the pressure was on. I researched options and found the solution: PODS. They deliver portable storage containers to your home, you load them at your pace, and they can pick them up for storage and later deliver to your new address. The PODS representative reassured me they could handle our timeline, and that relief was immediate.
PODS offers containers in several sizes and a space calculator to estimate how many you’ll need. They can be placed in your driveway or curbside. You can hire help to load them or do it yourself; we did a mix because most packing was already finished when the containers arrived.
We also rented reusable plastic moving bins for packing, which made packing and labeling much easier. These bins came in different sizes and included labels to identify contents, which simplified unpacking later.
For more detailed advice, see my two-part post with moving tips.
Years ago my husband and I decided we would no longer attempt heavy furniture moves ourselves after a few mishaps. Once the plan with PODS was set, they suggested using local moving labor. I hired a team through a moving labor service to handle the heavy lifting, and that choice was the best decision I made. They worked hard all day while I supervised and stayed out of harm’s way.
By the end of the day the house was mostly loaded. The next day, PODS took our containers to their secure storage facility, so we didn’t have to move twice—PODS would deliver our containers to our new place when we were ready. That made the whole process much smoother and less stressful; it was one of our easiest moving experiences.
Right now we’re temporarily staying with family while waiting to close on a new house. We finally have an accepted offer and expect to close soon, so I’ll share updates about our new home in an upcoming post.
I’ll share more about our final day in the house, the little blunders (I earned a few moving bruises), and additional tips that helped make this move go smoothly.
Have you had any tricky moving experiences? I’d love to hear your stories.
Thank you to PODS for partnering with me and helping make this move far less stressful.