How to Pack up your Life in 3 Short Weeks and Move, Sight Unseen, 910 Miles Away

Timeliness plays a crucial role in the success of the process.Choose one of the busiest times of year. Christmas would work, but for me, the end of May is best. The collective focus is to push through the frenetic burst of the fireworks'-like finale of the end of the school year (a spectacle of recitals and graduations, play offs and tournaments), reaching, striving for the first refreshing days of summer to arrive. This time of year will tie up your time as well as any availability of friends and family. Also, it is good to have your husband close to a thousand miles away so that he can not interfere in the carefully planned process.

First, procrastinate the act of physically packing by spending an inordinate amount of time in intense planning. Carry around little notepads and steal your kids' pencils and pens to make to-do lists and packing lists and itemized furniture lists and lists of your wall hangings. Make lists of your most precious possessions and lists of things you could do without. Do not include anything living or breathing; just objects that take up space.

Once you have exhausted all possible topics start categorizing your lists. Divide your list of wall hangings into groups like photographs, posters and paintings. Break the to-do lists into feasible parts by time: "do today", "do tomorrow", "do before the move". Or divide them into specifics. "Pack Rem's room," can be subdivided into, "pack Rem's toys", "pack Rem's books", and "pack Rem's clothes". If needed, these, too, can be further deconstructed ('pack train set", "pack blocks", "pack Lego's", etc.).

If you run out of paper (don't buy anything new during the moving process) start scribbling your lists on the back of envelopes from the mail or on the back of your daughters' progress reports. Pull random store receipts from your wallet that for some reason you saved and, using a blue or red pen for clarity, compose lists alongside the long forgotten but necessary purchases. Lists enable you to feel really proactive while expending very little effort.

Second, be prepared. Scatter stacks of different sized boxes in various places around the house. Do the same with packing tape and sharpie markers, but not in the same spots as the other packing materials so that wherever you are you can happen upon something that you might need. I found a need for packing tape, painters tape and duct tape so have all of them on hand. Buy a surplus of bubble wrap because you will lose at least a fourth of it to little fingers (and not so little ones). They will hide little stashes of the stuff and pop them in uncontrollable fits periodically throughout the day and into the night. Carefully determine how many boxes you will need for the entire packing process and then double it. You will need that number of boxes every two days.

Third, visualize. Imagine that you have lived the last fifteen years in an amazingly organized fashion. Picture the basement filled with neatly stacked and labeled boxes of baby clothes, school keepsakes, holiday decorations and camping gear. Create in your mind's eye kitchen cabinets filled with neatly nested plastic containers all with matching lids and small appliances sitting in rows with all of their parts (a missing rubber gasket between the blade and glass body renders a blender useless - trust me). Find a nice, quiet time to go down into the basement to survey what is actually there. Return up the stairs and turn off the light. Have a glass of wine or a bowl of ice cream. Allow the monumental reality of the task ahead to sink in slowly. This may take a few days. During this period of adjustment force yourself to peer into foreign territory. Survey the cabinets in the kids' bathroom. Open their closet doors and dig around a little. Spend some time shuffling through the file drawers in the studio. Accept the fact that you did not live in a manner that facilitated moving in any way.

Third, learn to love the word "trash". Pitch! Pitch! Pitch! If your husband bears a genetic tendency toward hoarding it is best to have him out of the house. If you are packing your house within a two week time frame it is nice if he is already living in another city. Some things just work out. Maybe he won't remember that he owns fifteen pocket knives (and the last time you saw him use one was a backpacking trip pre-kids). Throw away ten. Remember that your children have the same potential and choose school days to secretly throw out half of their belongings before even looking at what they are.

Did you keep every drawing of your first born but only one or two artistic endeavors of your other children? Now is the time to even the playing field. Ditch all of those carefully preserved creations of your first child. Save one or two and allow all of your children to feel equally neglected later on down the road.

Do you know the zip-loc bag of teeth hidden deep in your pantie drawer, that special place where the tooth fairy lovingly placed all of those offerings from under the pillows of those beautifully sleeping children full of love and belief and magic? Throw the bag away. No one wants their baby teeth and if they did you've already ruined it by mixing every one's teeth together. Throw it away.

Toys, books, odd and ends (such as alumni drink cozies) trapped behind beds, dressers, bookshelves and sofas all go into that big green bin that's moved to the curb on trash day. If no one complained for the last three months about the missing hair bands, rubber balls, ancient beanie babies and various sundries discovered upon moving the furniture then no one will miss them once they're in the garbage. Have no mercy.

Finally, never reveal that last tip that will give the upper hand in completing the packing process. This is something that everyone must figure for themselves. Or let that super hero of a husband fly in at the last minute and figure it out for you. That's what I'm going to do.