Moving

It is inevitable that when you are in the Army you WILL move. Not just once or twice total, but maybe even twice in one year's time. When you are moving to a new duty station, per Army Official Orders, you have the option of using Transportation to coordinate movers coming to pack up all of your household goods and ship them to the next duty station. Well - when you move to a post that has a waiting list for housing, you have to go ahead and find a home to live in in the mean time. You might ask yourself, "Should I go ahead and make this feel like home by unpacking everything?" Your answer should be "yes."

As an Army family, you have to make your house feel like home no matter how long or short you will be there. Afterall, home is where your soldier is!

My husband and I just packed up ALL of our belongings to move about 10 miles (in order to live on post). We are both very happy about the decision we made to move, but MAN OH MAN! Packing everything, moving it, and then unpacking it all within a weeks time is very tiring and time consuming!

I have to admit that we stayed in our new home on Saturday night and it is now Thursday night and everything is unpacked and put away. I am still working on laundry and hanging things on the walls, but it is HOME! All of this with an 8 month old infant and a husband who I told was not allowed to help unpack (he would put things in places just to get them out of the way and I am more of a strategic/organized unpacker). I am pretty impressed with myself so I have decided to create a challenge. Each time we move, I am going to try to beat my time from this move of unpacking. :)

It is so important to make sure that when you move (stateside or OCONUS) you have things with you that make you feel like your house is your home. There is a HUGE difference between the place you reside and creating it into your home. As milspouses, our job is to make sure that we can turn a house into a home no matter how different the houses are from duty station to duty station. Never purchase something specific for your house on one post because it is most likely not going to work out in the next house. Purchase things that seem universal. For example, panels of curtains that can hang nicely on a curtain rod. I recommend this instead of purchasing blinds (unless you live in Alaska and you need blackout blinds for your newborn baby...) because you generally have to have blinds cut for specific dimensions.

Keep a positive attitude during moves! It is, afterall, as good as you make it! So - make it GOOD!

Sapperette