In my last post, I covered the allowances and reimbursements you are eligible for with a Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move in the military. Today, I’m going to cover some ways to not spend an extra $5,000 out of pocket during the moving process, especially if you’ll have significant time between when your stuff gets picked up by movers and delivered back to you in your new location. Moving can be fairly frequent occurrence if you or anyone in your family decides to make the military a career. Maybe you get to live somewhere for five years or more. Maybe you end up moving every two years (or even more frequently). Most military moves are not last-second orders to go somewhere totally different, [and you’ll have the time and opportunity] so that gives you the time and opportunity to do the most important thing with moving: Planning. However, if you are moving and won’t be without all of your household goods (HHG) for too long (probably a couple of weeks or less), you certainly won’t need to do this much planning.
Your Timeline
First off, it will take some time to prepare for a successful move. A lot more goes into moving than you might initially think. Below I’ll layout a timeline that should be able to help you along. I also know that this has been and will be thrown off due to COVID-19, but eventually, things should return to normal. I’m a list maker, so I will usually have a spreadsheet with different categories listed of things I need for us as a family and for each of us individually.
3 Months (or longer) before PCS
Start working down your pantry and freezer, so you aren’t giving away as much food before you move. You will have extra food you can give to friends before you leave town. You’ll have other things you can look at selling or giving away as well. This time should also be used to consider where you want to live in the new location, and the size of the place. Depending on how long you will be between homes, you may want to arrange where you are going to be staying. For our last two moves, we were between homes for over two months, so I started planning a few months in advance to figure out where we were going to stay. Luckily, we have awesome families and we were able to stay with them for a good portion of our time without a home.
1 Month from PCS
Your freezer and pantry should be worked down pretty well, and you should have narrowed your search for the locations you want to live at the new location. If you took house hunting leave, you may have signed a lease already. Now is time to focus more on the timeline from the day the packers start your move until when you will receive your HHG at your new PCS location. You should be thinking about and even finalizing plans for the following:
- How long will you be between homes?
- Where will you be going between homes?
- What kind of weather will you expect?
- What will the sleeping conditions be like? Will you need pack n’ plays? Air mattresses?
- What type of lodging will you be in between homes?
- What else will you need? What will your kids need?
These are questions you need to plan for. If you don’t plan around these questions, you will start ‘wasting’ money on things you need short term because you didn’t plan ahead. For our last two PCS moves, these were all questions I planned for in advance of the movers showing up to pack up our HHG.
Here is a quick rundown of the planning for the above questions for our 2017 and 2019 PCS moves:
In 2017, we knew we would be out of our primary residence for at least 8 weeks, and we would be visiting family driving from Florida to North Carolina to Virginia to Maryland to New York to Pennsylvania to Maryland and finally settling in Virginia. This was in the spring, so I had to plan for all kinds of weather. We saw snow and also went to the beach before we moved into our house. Our kids were one and two, so we needed two pack n’ plays and two booster seats. Luckily, nearly all the sleeping arrangements were in regular homes with a few nights in a hotel. With little kids we also needed a few books and toys.
For our 2019 move, we ended up selling our house about a month earlier than anticipated, which is preferred over worrying about selling your house at the last minute or after you have transferred. For this PCS move, we were not in a primary residence for over 12 weeks. This time during our travels, we stayed in Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania for those 12 weeks before driving west to Colorado. Luckily for this PCS, the weather was more consistent and warmer, so we didn’t need to pack clothes to cover as wide a temperature spread. Aside from the road trip between Pennsylvania and Colorado, we were able to stay in short term rentals or with family the rest of the time. The big differences for this move were that we needed air mattresses to make an Airbnb work better for us, and we packed beach toys. For this move, we knew we would be in temporary housing arrangements for a bunch of the time and able to cook, so I planned for having some basic pantry items for cooking, mainly spices and a few condiments. We still needed toys, books, and movies for the kids.
1 Week from PCS
Find a staging area in your house to put stuff that is physically going with you in your suitcases and/or cars until you receive your HHG shipment at your new location. Have the kids pick out toys they want for the trip. Start setting aside or packing clothes, shoes, jackets, hats and any other clothing. Put the bigger items that you don’t need at home but will need on your trip like pack n’ plays or air mattresses. Pull out your important paperwork. The military pretty much says carry all paperwork with personal information on it with you, which isn’t feasible. I keep it simpler and essential: passports, social security cards, birth certificates, my DD-214, car titles, real estate deeds, and our wills.
2 Days Before PCS
When the movers are only a couple days from arriving, you should be just about done with your staging and washing your final loads of laundry before the movers get there and flip your world upside down. Put things in the staging area. Put things in the trash, especially stuff you don’t want or need at the new location. If your staging area is a separate room, hang a sign or mark the room to show the movers they don’t need to move anything in there. Also, now is the time to get whatever you are going to have as far as snacks and drinks for the movers. I usually have bottled water and boxes of granola bars, and we will get them lunch during the days the movers are at the house.
First Day of Packout -Movers Arrive!
When the movers get there, you will usually walk through with them to do a once over of your place and your stuff. You will be rushed and probably lose track of some things, but there are some specific items you need to get set aside for your move that are still out. Some daily use items you need to prevent from being packed are:
- Toiletries
- Medications
- Sneakers (we literally had to get a box cut open to get shoes out one time)
- Water Bottles
- Snacks
- Laptops/Tablets
- Phone, Laptop, and Tablet Chargers
- Diaper Bag
- Booster Seats
You will also need to do some cleaning after your stuff is gone, so you’ll want to either arrange to borrow a vacuum or broom or keep a vacuum or broom out until the last box is taped up on the last day of the move out.
Last Day of Packout
First thing in the morning (or the night before), check to make sure the movers packed up everything. Check drawers, cabinets, closets, places kids hide stuff, and anywhere else the movers may not have looked closely enough to get everything. This is the day some furniture will be taken apart and everything will be loaded on to the truck. You should have everything set aside by now. Once something is on the truck, you won’t see it again until you receive your HHG at the new house.
Wrapping Up
It sounds like a lot of work and a lot of time to plan for a move, but the work will pay off. The more you prepare and plan for the move, the smoother it should go. Unless of course a global pandemic hits after you pack our and you end up living in temporary housing for a couple of unexpected months. Or your move just gets delayed due to the global pandemic, stopping any planning you had already done in its tracks.
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