Navigating the Challenges of a Military Move: Lessons from our Cross-Country PCS

[00:00:00] Alison: Hello, hello and welcome back to the show. It's been a little bit of a break while we have PCS'd our family from Colorado to Washington state, but we are back up and running. So the first couple of episodes that I have for you are going to be From the move. So today's episode is real time. I recorded it while I was driving in the car.

[00:00:23] Alison: So please excuse the road noise that you might hear. The sound quality is, I mean, you can still hear me well, but there's, it's a little bit echoey cause I was literally recording it as I was driving down the highway but just sharing kind of the, in the heat of the moment from packing out of the house, loading the truck and starting the drive, and then. 

[00:00:45] Alison: Episodes every other week are going to continue as we go forward. And the episode coming up after that is going to be what has happened since we got here. So stay tuned for that. I hope you enjoy the show and it's good to be back.

[00:00:00] Speaker: I wanted to give you guys an update in real time on our full Diddy PCS. So, I am currently on the road driving behind , foot, Doing about 55 miles an hour because we are going up a hill. We packed out of the house today. A few snafus. With that whole situation, we ended up, we were supposed to get the truck on Monday, and we got a call from U Haul on Sunday telling us that the truck would not be available on Monday.

[00:00:48] Speaker: It wouldn't be available until Tuesday afternoon, and we had movers scheduled to come help us load the truck on Tuesday morning, and then we were planning on leaving on Wednesday to start our drive to Washington. So last minute pivot, we ended up getting the U Haul Tuesday afternoon. We loaded it today, and now we are driving.

[00:01:19] Speaker: The almost nine hours to Utah after loading the truck. So the levels of exhaustion are pretty epic right now. I know I've talked to you guys about this before, but when you are deciding if you're a full Didier, if when you're deciding if you're going to use U Haul, are you going to use Penske? Are you going to use pods?

[00:01:46] Speaker: Are you going to use a U Pack trailer? All of those different options. You really have to look around and compare costs yourself. For us, when we move from Washington to Colorado, sorry if this is, if this is, You've heard this before, but when we moved from Washington to Colorado, we used Penske because Penske was the cheapest.

[00:02:09] Speaker: When we move now that we are going back to Washington, Penske was almost double the amount of U Haul. So we're using U Haul.

[00:02:17] Speaker: we ended up using uhaul. And then I have told you many times before, shop around. Shop around for different cities to get the best rate. And again, for us, when we move from to Colorado. We, Michael flew out to Spokane. It was like a 60 plane ticket, flew out to Spokane, drove the three and a half, four hours back.

[00:02:44] Speaker: And it saved us a couple thousand dollars on the U Haul. So, and then the same thing happened this time, trying to get a U Haul in the greater Denver area. area or Colorado Springs even was, I can't remember what the price was, was, I think it was pushing 3000, I believe. But we went to, we got our U Haul out of Cheyenne Wyoming, which is two hours north of Denver.

[00:03:11] Speaker: and we were able to get it for half the price. So really you have, you just have to play with it, play with your pickup locations, play with your drop off locations and to find the best price. Because again, you know, if you're doing a full ditty, the lower you can keep your costs, the more money you get to keep.

[00:03:32] Speaker: Right. So and then, okay, so we always like to kind of dissect our moves. Okay. As we are going through them. So this is move number nine for us. I don't know that I would say it's getting easier. I think we have a better idea of what to expect. And we have processes that we do to pack into load and, you know, And things like that.

[00:04:05] Speaker: It still sucks. Like hands down 100 percent do not recommend. Zero out of five stars. And this is the season. It's so funny. This is the season where I'm always like, I'm done. I don't, I don't want to do this anymore. We need to retire. I got it up. This is, this is that moment. This is that moment because this is the crappiest part of our lifestyle is packing all your shit and putting it on a truck and driving it across the country and then unloading it and trying to figure out where everything's going to go.

[00:04:41] Speaker: How are you going to make your furniture fit in this house? And it is just, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, it's Just the more you do it, the less tolerance you have for it. I don't know. That's how I feel anyways. I don't know. I don't know how you feel about it, but, let's see what other things to share. So I, I know that a lot of people, when they're doing a ditty move, I think the most I don't want to say scary, daunting, maybe that's the right word part is the loading and the unloading of the truck.

[00:05:12] Speaker: It's a lot, right? And so I've, again, I've mentioned this before as well. You can, there's a, a service called hire a helper that will literally give you people to come help you load and unload your truck. Like that's, That's what, that's all they do. And so that's, we did the same thing again here. A pro tip is that we, when we, when we did eat, so our last move from Washington, Colorado was our first full ditty and the movers that we had here at Colorado told us, Hey, FYI, if you book through us directly, it's about half the cost of what you would pay going through hire helper, which makes sense because hire a helper is basically like the concierge service or the broker of the moving companies.

[00:06:02] Speaker: So, you know, everybody wants to make a little bit of money. It would make sense that their rates are a little bit higher. So we did end up calling the company who we booked, who we used when we offloaded because we had a great experience and it, it did end up being cheaper. So the quote, cause I looked, the quote, if I went through hire a helper was 340 for two movers for two hours.

[00:06:32] Speaker: And when I went through, Through the company, it is $50 an hour per person. So if you have two people, it's a hundred dollars an hour and you don't have a specific time, you know, when you're done with them, you can, you know, you're done with them. So we typically on our first move we had two movers for two hours and it was not enough

[00:06:57] Speaker: So on this move it was, it was, it's enough for the offload two guys or two movers for two hours on the offload is, was plenty. for us. Two hours was not enough on the load and it was the same thing this time too. So we ended up having two lovely gentlemen help us out today and they ended up being they ended up staying for three hours.

[00:07:21] Speaker: So we did use them for three hours.

[00:00:00] Alison: So essentially we had two movers for three hours booking directly through the company as opposed to two movers for two hours through Hire a Helper at the same price. So that ended up working out in our favor. favor. Again, highly recommend the weave. So this was our third experience having movers help us on load and off load and always are again.

[00:00:31] Alison: Our experience has been very professional. They work really hard. And you know, getting the job done and honestly, there's stuff I don't know. I feel like when you, you've been packing for so long, right, packing and you're blanketing all your stuff and shrink wrap and like all of that stuff is like the 11th hour, right?

[00:00:56] Alison: And just exhausted. So Michael and I were up till midnight last night. night, you know, trying to get all the furniture, you know, like the table legs taken off and the desk legs taken off and everything kind of bundled together and shelves taken apart and different things like that. So up till midnight doing that and then up at like seven a.

[00:01:15] Alison: m. Again this morning to try to button the rest of this stuff up. So So that we're, you know, as prepared as we can be when they show up so that you can efficiently get your truck loaded, right? I mean, so we had our truck loaded. It took us about so we had the movers for three hours and then it took Michael and I another probably hour.

[00:01:39] Alison: with the little odds and ends. And that's because we were like maxed out for space. Like you guys, Oh my gosh. I really thought, I thought because we took a bunch of stuff and put it in storage in Virginia, because we're only going to be in Washington for three years and then we're retiring and going to go to Virginia.

[00:01:59] Alison: So we put a bunch of stuff in storage and I thought there's no way we're going to fill up a truck. Like we put all this stuff in storage. Oh, Oh, but we did. Oh, but we sure did. I will, when I finally get back on social media again, I will post a picture. I'll post some pictures because holy Jenga. It was like Tetris.

[00:02:25] Alison: It just, Michael is very, very, very good at maximizing space, but holy cow. It was, Very stressful. And unfortunately, that's a huge time suck at the end is, you know, you're trying to make your stuff fit on the truck. And of course, it's the pain in the butt stuff like your patio furniture and your bikes. And the tools for it.

[00:02:51] Alison: from the garage and your lawn mower. And you know what I mean? Like stuff that's not nice and neat and stackable and compact, right? It's all the odd, weird shape stuff. And it's just, it's a lot. It's, it's, it's a lot. So we completely maxed out the 26 foot truck again. Actually we ended up leaving two things behind.

[00:03:16] Alison: We are lucky in this regard. this time that Michael has to come back. So he's going to be coming back to the house. There's a gap between when we are getting, when the girls and I are going to Washington and he's not finished with his job here yet. So we're going to be separated again for a few weeks.

[00:03:36] Alison: And that's, you know, that's a tough one because you have to match your current situation with the realities of the military, commitment, right? So what happened to us is that we had a, you know, we knew where we wanted to live in Washington, the area that we wanted to be in. And more importantly, the school district that we wanted the girls to be in.

[00:04:10] Alison: And so, you know, I'm scouring Zillow for the last few months. Yeah. looking for places and we were renting, we're not purchasing a home in Washington. And just trying to

[00:04:26] Alison: trying to find a place, right? And so we found, we finally found a place that had the number of bedrooms that we wanted in the school district. It's not an old house because I'm a house knob. I'm not afraid to admit it and would accept the dogs, all the things, right? And so the downside of that though, is that We wanted like a July 15th move in and the latest that they would push it was a June 15th move in.

[00:04:52] Alison: So we've been paying for this house in Washington since June 15th. And it's like, okay, I think, you know, we just, we need to go and I mean, and then I feel like, I don't know how this is for, for you guys, but for us and for me, Is when I know I'm going somewhere, I want to go like, you know, it's like the, I call that phase, like the awful in between, right?

[00:05:18] Alison: Where like, you know, you're going, you have a vague timeline of when you're going and you're just in the limbo of like, are we going to be able to find a house? Are we going to get, are we going to get on base housing? Like what, what is going to happen? And you're just kind of in limbo. And I hate that phase.

[00:05:39] Alison: That is equally as torturous in different ways than the actual loading and moving of your crap across the country. But we, yeah, so we, you know, we know we're going and I, I want to get settled. I want to, I want to get where we're going to go and I want to, I want to get in my house and I want to set it up and I want to get my pictures on the wall and I want to have all my stuff out again and I want the girls to be able to have their stuffed animals all over the place if they want and put whatever they want on the wall and.

[00:06:15] Alison: Be able to be in their space because we haven't had that for the last month here in Colorado because we've been selling our house. So Having to live in a house that staged is just not fun You know, I mean cleaning constantly and you know, we I packed I packed away so much stuff already It just you know, it just doesn't feel like homey and comfy when you've got, you know, you just don't have all your stuff around.

[00:06:45] Alison: And so we kind of wanted to get to Washington almost as soon as we can just because I don't know, like, let's get there and like, get, get life back going again. You know, I don't know. Like, I feel like when you get into PCS season or you're in a PCS season, I feel like you almost kind of pause a little bit, right?

[00:07:03] Alison: Like you're not going out and doing a bunch of stuff and you're, you're just, you're so completely tied up. in the moving of your house, like the packing, like the logistics of all that stuff. Right. So I think that's part of the impetus of us to get there as quick as we can really. But the downside to that is that now we're going to move into the, to a new house.

[00:07:29] Alison: And, and then Michael's leaving. So, that sucks. And we're gonna be there for a little while without him. And the same thing happened when we came to Colorado. And it just sucks. I'm like, can we, can we, can we please? Time it so that we all go together and stay together. Can we, can we make that happen, please?

[00:07:54] Alison: So I'll see if move number 10 is the charm. We all get to go together and stay together. Although I have to say. You know what? Honestly. Okay. So this is move number nine. I would say I'm trying to think back on it now. I would say probably half of our moves. He hasn't been with us. He's either had a school that he had to go to.

[00:08:18] Alison: He had to finish his tour. And so he helps us move and get there. And then he's got to go do whatever he's got to do. I feel like that's happened at least half of our moves. And I know I'm not unique in that situation. But anyway, so there's that part of it. So it's, it's You know, a little bittersweet that we're going to be in our house, but then we're going to be separated for a while for Michael, which sucks.

[00:08:41] Alison: So you know, there's that part that's kind of weighing a little bit. And then the other side of it is, you know, we're going into a smaller house. So just logistically, cause like. I feel like that's part of my process in the PCS phase is where is all of our stuff going to go? You know what I mean? So like in my head I'm space planning from the jump so that when we arrive, I know where stuff's going to go and I can be efficient with getting it unpacked and put away and whatnot.

[00:09:20] Alison: So we're moving into a much smaller house. But then what we were in in Colorado and that hence why we put a bunch of stuff in storage, but it's still going to be a challenge. It's still going to be a challenge to get our stuff in there. So I'm, you know, kind of the mental gymnastics of, of working through that kind of stuff.

[00:09:40] Alison: But the other thing that one of the big things. Because again, we like to kind of look back as you're going through the process. And then after we've like finished completely finished, we kind of Monday morning quarterback, right? Go back over the move. What could we do better for next time? What could we make easier for next time?

[00:10:01] Alison: So what we took from the previous move was we're not going to schedule a vacation or a trip or anything within, a few weeks at least, if not a month prior to PCS. And we did do that this time. However, we kind of got a wrench thrown in it because we put our house on the market. So putting our house on the market jumped that timeline up.

[00:10:32] Alison: So we ended up packing a bunch of stuff ahead of time. So that kind of made it a little bit different. But one of the things that we are taking from this one is that it has been a season, a season of, complete overwhelm and exhaustion and stress. Like massive amounts of stress and We kind of came to a point where we were like, okay, this is a lot.

[00:11:01] Alison: It's a lot for me It's a lot for him in different ways What how can we this this was our motto? What can we take off our plate? What can we take off our plate? And so for us for this move One of the things for me was I paused the podcast. So I was like, I cannot think about trying to create content and schedule and all of the, I just, I can't, I don't have the capacity for that right now.

[00:11:31] Alison: So that got taken off the table. Social media haven't been on it. If you follow me on Instagram, which I hope you do, haven't posted in more than a month. Like I just, and I have a lot of stuff. Like we've done a lot of really cool stuff. It's going to be a retroactive Instagram sharing season when we get settled in because we've done a lot of really cool stuff as we were heading out a lot of cool like road trips and things like that, trying to make the most out of Colorado before we hit the road.

[00:12:02] Alison: And so I definitely want to share that stuff. But I just, again, I don't have the capacity right now for that. Another thing we took off our plate was we've had a saltwater fish tank while we've been here in Colorado and really liked that. It's a lot of work, but Michael has wanted to have one forever.

[00:12:18] Alison: And so we made it happen this time. And just the logistics of trying to move saltwater fish with saltwater. And they need to be warm and in a car and, oh gosh, it was just logistically, it was a little bit of a nightmare to try to, it was, it was very stressful more so for Michael than it was for me because I'm like, these are, this is your thing.

[00:12:44] Alison: Like I'll feed them when you're gone and I enjoy them and I actually probably feed them and take care of them in that regard more than he does. But we were like, I think we just have to, I think we, need to give the fish back to the fish store and and probably not have a tank while we're in Washington because we're looking ahead and looking ahead, we have another move in three years across the whole country, like from Washington state to Virginia.

[00:13:17] Alison: Like you can't, that's pretty darn far. I mean, I think Florida, actually, if you went to Alaska, that would be even further. But like it is, it's, it's a long way to go. And so if we're this stressed about how are we going to keep these fish alive while we move from Denver to Washington, how are we going to keep the fish alive when we move from Washington to call it for what, from Washington to Virginia.

[00:13:42] Alison: So we decided that we were we gave the fish to the fish store. So they're, going to hopefully go to another happy home, but otherwise they can live in the, in the fish store. So we feel good about that. And I think that that was a huge weight to be taken off in this process for us. So that was kind of our motto for this one was what can we take off our plate?

[00:14:10] Alison: And I think sometimes we need to give ourselves that grace because this is hard. It's so hard and, the more you do it, the harder it gets, it feels like, and it's just, and again, like I said before, I think it's the tolerance. I just don't have the tolerance for this that I used to. And it's just, it's a lot.

[00:14:39] Alison: It's a lot. So what can you take off your plate to make it a little bit easier? And then another thing that We learned from this one was, and I, I feel like this is, you can kind of get different information depending, you know, everybody's got everybody. It's so personal, right? Like some people, like I've got a girlfriend who'll do a road trip.

[00:15:00] Alison: She doesn't want to drive more than six hours a day. Like not interested. We're kind of of the let's get there mentality. Do we have to drive 12 hours? If we drive 12 hours straight while we get there, let's do that. Right. I don't want to stop halfway. Like, no, we're just going to go. So I kind of feel like you have to go with your personality and your personal preference.

[00:15:20] Alison: But for us, we plan out our, and by we, I mean, Michael, we have our, our hats that we wear in the PCS process. And Michael's, one of Michael's hats is to plan our route. So he will look for, you know, how many hours we usually do about eight ish hours a day. And so he'll kind of look ahead to, okay, where's the closest like big city to that mileage or time frame?

[00:15:51] Alison: And look for hotels that are, you know, close by the road that also have big easy to access parking lots because we have a 26 foot truck. And then, you know, we kind of plan out the route in that way and make hotel reservations ahead of time. I think there's other people that like to, you know, fly by the seat of their pants and just, Hey, I'm really tired.

[00:16:17] Alison: Let's look for a place to stay here. And they just, you know. Pop off the road and hope for the best. I, we are not a hope for the best family. We hope hope is not a course of action that, that phrase is said in our house quite often. So we have a pretty, you know, we know where we're going. We have a hotel reservation already.

[00:16:39] Alison: And then again, if you're traveling with pets, it's not something that you can just walk into and hope, hope for the best. You really have to kind of plan ahead with that. So we've got the dogs with us, so that's, you know, adds another layer in To wanting to have that preplanned out. And then the other thing that we really pre plan in there as well.

[00:17:02] Alison: And this is something that I think comes with time is that an experience is weighing. the, your vehicles. So when you full Diddy, I think the branches of service are different with what they ask for. So you need to go through your personal property office and they will, when you have, you know, when you put your move in move.

[00:17:24] Alison: mil, they'll you have to get counseled and they will walk you through what you need to do for your specific move. But for us, we needed to have an empty weight and a full weight. And so we had a really tough time when we not a tough time. It was just a pain in the butt. We didn't make the best logistical decisions for weights on our way from Washington to Colorado.

[00:17:52] Alison: So we were like, okay, let's try to make that a little bit cleaner. And so what we did is there was a loves is a really they often, it's a huge like truck stop and oftentimes not every single one has cat scales, but often they have cat scales. And so we, there was one close to where we picked up the U Haul and we were like, okay, it's going to be empty.

[00:18:15] Alison: Let's just weigh it right away and then we'll go home and we'll load it up. And then that same, loves where we went to the scales was on our way out of town as well. So now we were able to stop there and get our full weight and So now that's done and we don't have to worry about it. Just for curiosity sake, we have a 26 foot truck and we have 9, 800 pounds in there. 

[00:18:44] Alison: Which, which is interesting to me because we, I feel like this U Haul is packed a lot tighter than the Penske truck that we had. It was 26 foot Penske truck too. I believe it was 26 foot. I think it's the same size as this U Haul. And we had over 10, 000 pounds, almost 11, 000 pounds. in that Penske truck and there was room at the top.

[00:19:08] Alison: So I'm curious, cubic foot wise, the difference between the Penske and the U Haul. We're gonna, I'll, I'll let you know what that research finds because we were talking about that today. Like, why does this feel like it's so much tighter, but it's actually less weight. So anyways, 9, 800 is what Michael's got in his right now.

[00:19:25] Alison: So the scales, that's another thing that we kind of streamlined this time. So we don't have to worry about it. Because there's you just have to look around where you are because there's like where we are in Denver. There aren't scales. There's not there. I don't like the closest one is more than an hour away.

[00:19:45] Alison: I believe that's what we found. So it's like, well, shoot, what are you? What are you gonna do? You know, you don't want to have to drive out of your way. So that's something that's important an important part of your move here. Again, if you're doing a diddy move, you have to get those weight tickets. And so really trying to plan that in is also a big thing.

[00:20:05] Alison: And then trying to, and again, that's something that we learned The learn the hard way on the way over here is we stopped at some Catskills in Tacoma right outside of Seattle and it was a flaming nightmare. I mean, like the, it was just, it was really hard to get in and out of, and it was, it seemed like it was in a little bit of a sketchy area and we were just like, what?

[00:20:31] Alison: And we ended up, it took us like 45 minutes or more to get both vehicles because my car, I'm driving behind him. So wait, we're waiting my car as well. So trying to get that done and get back. It was just a logistical nightmare. And then again now, okay, so now we have a full weight, which we got in Washington.

[00:20:49] Alison: And now we need an empty way before we can return the truck. And it's trying, it's like, we're driving like 45 minutes to go get a weight. And then you got to drive to the U Haul place. in like the opposite direction, you know what I mean? So just trying to find hopefully something in route so that you can get those those empty and full weights as easily as possible.

[00:21:12] Alison: And again, if you can get to, if you're on like a main highway, it's pretty easy to find a loves or something like that that has T. A. I think also tends to have a lot of cat scales. So you can, you know, but just trying to be very strategic with and thinking ahead about where you're going to have where you're going to get your weights.

[00:21:38] Alison: Because if you leave it to chance, then it could potentially be a total pain in the neck that happened to us. And we took a load of stuff to storage, like I was telling you, in Virginia last week. And we weighed, he weighed the truck en route because there, you know, he just pulled off the highway, got a weight, no worries.

[00:22:00] Alison: But then we had the truck empty after we offloaded in the storage space. And we had to drive 36 miles. to the closest scale and then drive 36 miles back up to where the U Haul place was. And like when you're moving, no, I, you don't want to drive more than you have to. You don't want to drive more than you have to.

[00:22:22] Alison: So you know, ideally trying to make it as clean as possible. So I'm feeling pretty good about that. Our in and out weights this time as because we're already done, we already have our weights, we already have our empty and full weights for this trip already done. So that's really good. All right.

[00:22:42] Alison: I think that's all I have to share for now. I will I I'll see how I'm feeling after we offload the house. If I have anything to share in that regard, as we, Yeah. As we get to the house and offload everything. So three more days of driving, not three today, tomorrow, and then we arrive on Friday. So all right.

[00:23:07] Alison: Stay tuned until next time.