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Moving During a Pandemic

For anyone that has moved before, you know its stressful. For anyone that's moved with young kids, you know it's even more stressful--but moving with young kids during a national pandemic now that's the icing on the cake.

For those of you who may not know, I live in Hawaii. During the Coronavirus pandemic, they pretty much shut down the island. Most businesses here had to close unless it was deemed essential, we had a nightly curfew, you were only allowed to see the people who lived in the same household as you, and one person could leave the house at a time. 

We had members of the National Guard here that would set up roadblocks during the day. They would stop every car and ask why you weren't home, and if it was an essential outing or not.


With all of that said, we had sold our house and had to move during this shutdown. That meant we couldn't hire a moving company to help because it wasn't deemed essential.

One of our businesses was allowed to remain open, which left my husband bouncing between running a shop, helping pack, and managing the kids. On the days that he had to run into work, it was my kids and I left to do all the packing--scratch that, it was me packing and my kids' unpacking, that sounds about right. 

As I stated earlier, moving with kids is stressful alone, but not having family or daycare made it rough. My kids aren't quite old enough to understand why all of our belongings were going into boxes, especially when it came to their toys and books.  The second I turned away, the nicely organized almost full box would be empty. 

I think I cried out of frustration every single day, and you know what that's okay.  


Ultimately, I think it took twice as long to go through all our belongings deciding what to keep, donate, etc. I couldn't even tell you how many times I had to repack boxes that little curious hands had unpacked. At one point, my wonderful husband started going through the 'donate' piles wondering why we couldn't keep the 500 cables and cords he has had for those "what if we need this" moments (please tell me my husband can't be the only one to have that box?).


After weeks of stress, chaos, a national pandemic, we finally moved.

It was such a relief just to be done, and I never want to move again in my life, but I'm sure we all say that. Our belongings are now safely packed and in storage, waiting to move into their new home. The tears, sweat, and bittersweet feelings have passed (mostly). My family is ready to start our new chapter, make new memories, and cherish the old ones. 

Oh, and we are never going to move during a pandemic again!

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Samantha N

Business owner balancing family, work and our love for travel. Fueled by coffee and my two boys.

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