A Quick Confession Before We Start
I'm writing this from the rental we've been in for almost a year while our new house gets built — also in Coeur d'Alene Place, which is my favorite neighborhood in CdA, a few blocks from where we used to live. Out in our garage right now is a wall of cardboard boxes that have been re-stacked, re-shuffled, and re-opened more times than I can count. Some of them are crushed. A few have that classic problem where the tape ripped down the middle the second you grabbed the box wrong, and now you can't trust the bottom.
We also have a storage unit a few minutes away packed floor-to-ceiling for the same reason. We had to maximize every square inch in there, which means towers of boxes, which means the boxes on the bottom are slowly losing the will to live.
This summer — soon — we move into our new house. And it's not our first move. It's not our tenth. Chelsea (my wife) and I and our four kids have moved more times than we ever planned, partly because life kept happening and partly because we've been fixing up homes along the way. So when I tell you that a local move across CdA is still a real move, I mean it.
This checklist is the one I'd hand to a friend two weeks before their move day. It's not theory. It's what works.
A Local Move Is Still a Move
Here's the part nobody tells you when you're moving from, say, Hayden to CdA, or Rathdrum to Post Falls. Because you're "just going across town," it's tempting to underestimate the whole thing.
Don't.
The drive may be short, but the stuff is the same amount of stuff. The packing is the same packing. The kids' school bags still have to be findable on Monday morning. Your toothbrush still needs to be where you can find it the night you collapse into bed. Local moves trick you into starting late because they feel small. They aren't. The two-week runway below is the difference between "that was tight but smooth" and "never again."
Two Weeks Out: Decide What's Going
This is the only week where you should be making decisions, not boxes. Open every closet, walk into every room, and pick the things you're not bringing with you.
Our family rule, after this many moves: if you didn't unpack it from the last move, you probably don't need it this move either. Box → garage → next move → repeat is a real pattern. Break it now while you have time.
What to do this week:
- Walk every room with a notepad (or just the notes app). Make three lists: keep, donate, trash.
- Drop donations off as you fill bags. Don't let them pile up — pile-up = "I'll deal with that later," which becomes "let's just bring it."
- If you have a storage unit, this is the moment to be honest about what's still earning its rent.
- Take photos of how complicated things are connected — TVs, gaming consoles, the speaker in the basement. Future-you on move-in day will thank you.
Ten to Twelve Days Out: Book the Logistics
This is the week things get scheduled. Don't push it later — local availability tightens up fast in summer, especially around the end of the month when everyone's leases turn over.
Book this week:
- Your totes. Reserve your package and pick a delivery date 2–3 days before move day. We deliver them to your driveway and you fill them on your own time. (Honest plug: you can also message us if you want help figuring out which package fits your home — happy to talk through it.)
- Movers if you're using them. We pair well with local CdA moving crews — totes load and unload faster than cardboard, which usually saves you an hour of paid moving time. Ask whoever you book if they've handled a tote-based move before.
- Utilities. Schedule transfers for power, water, internet. Internet specifically — call now. The tech might not have an opening for two weeks.
- Mail forwarding with USPS. Set the start date for the day after your move.
- A childcare plan for move day if you have little ones. Move day is not a "let the kids hang out at home" day. Trust me.
One Week Out: Start Packing the Easy Stuff
Here's the rule I keep repeating to my kids whenever we move: a little bit at a time, but the sooner the better. A couple of totes a day starting now is so much easier than a frantic 14-hour day at the end.
Start with the things you don't use daily:
- Books, photo albums, decor on shelves
- Off-season clothes (you're moving in summer? pack the sweaters)
- Kids' toys that aren't current favorites — keep their three "must-haves" out
- Garage stuff, holiday decorations, tools you won't need this week
- The "stuff in the corner of the spare room that you're not sure what to do with"
Label every tote. Just write the room and a one-line description on a piece of painter's tape: "Master bedroom — winter clothes." It takes ten seconds and saves a lot of confused unpacking.
Three to Five Days Out: The Kitchen and Bathrooms
The kitchen is its own beast. Save it for last because you'll keep using it until the night before the move. But don't wait until the night before to start.
A few practical things we've learned the hard way:
- Use your own kitchen towels, blankets, and even clothing as packing material around your dishes. Saves you the cost of bubble wrap and you'd be packing them anyway. Your dishes ride in soft cocoons of clean laundry, and you skip a Costco run for packaging.
- Glasses and stemware get stood upright in totes, packed snug, and topped with a folded blanket so they can't shift.
- Bathrooms: pack everything except your "two-day kit" — toothbrush, deodorant, one towel, the medications and supplements you take daily.
- Whatever's still in the fridge and freezer? Eat it down this week or freeze the leftovers in stackable containers. Cleaning out a fridge is a Sunday-afternoon job, not a 6 AM day-of-the-move job.
Two Days Out: Final Sweep
By now most of the house should be packed. The last 48 hours is for finishing the kitchen, the bathrooms, and the stuff you actually use.
- Pack a clear "first night" tote for each person: pajamas, change of clothes, toothbrush, phone charger, one pillow. Mark it with their name. Don't load it with the rest. It travels with you.
- Confirm delivery time with your mover and tote delivery (we'll usually text you the morning of).
- Withdraw a little cash for tips if you're tipping movers. They earn it.
- Charge every phone, every battery, every cordless tool.
- Set out the stuff you'll need for breakfast on move day — coffee, mugs, cereal — in a clearly marked tote you can grab last and unpack first.
Move Day: The Choreography
Here's how we run move day, after enough trial and error to fill another article.
Morning, before movers arrive:
- Eat breakfast. Sounds dumb. Skip it and you'll regret it by 11 AM.
- Walk the house one more time. Closets, attic, garage corners, behind doors. Things hide.
- Have the "first night" totes loaded into your own car so they don't end up at the bottom of the truck.
Loading:
- Heaviest totes go on the dolly first. Lighter ones on top. Stack flat and tight.
- The free dolly that comes with your tote rental does about 60% of the work of moving day. Use it. Your back is not a competition.
- If you have movers, let them work — pointing and answering questions, not lifting alongside them. You'll bottleneck the choreography.
At the new house:
- First totes off the truck go straight to whatever room they're labeled for. Don't pile them in the entryway "to sort later." Later isn't real.
- Unpack the kitchen and one bathroom that night. Even if nothing else gets done, kitchen + bathroom = you can live here.
- Order pizza. Don't try to cook. The day deserves a celebration that doesn't involve more work.
What to Do With the Empties
When your totes are empty, just stack them inside the front door. We come pick them up on the day we agreed on — no cleaning, no flattening, no taping back up, no Saturday trip to the dump.
That's the part I keep telling friends about. With cardboard, the move ends and the cleanup starts. With totes, the move ends.
You Don't Have to Do It Like We Used To
I have done this so many times. Spirit Lake. Kayla Court. Woodland Meadows. The little apartment off Sherman. An RV at my grandfather's place for nine months. Pine Hill with three roommates. Then as a family into a bedroom at Chelsea's parents' house with bunk beds, mattresses on the floor, a fish tank and lizard tank in the corner, and our youngest on the way. Crown Point in Post Falls. Back to CdA Place on Versailles, and then to Hart Court. Then a rental on Sorbonne. And finally our new build, on Victor Loop.
Every single one of those moves involved the cardboard chaos. And that is the reason I started this company. So that I won't have to do it again and so other CdA families won't need to either. As many times as we've moved, there's bound to be more in store. But instead of dreading the next one, I actually look forward to it now. My goal is that you can too.
If you're moving in CdA, Post Falls, Hayden, Rathdrum, or Dalton Gardens this season and you want one less thing to worry about — pick your package and reserve a delivery date. I'll see you on the driveway.
— Josh