Moving a Family of Eight to Idaho at Christmas: What Nobody Tells You About a Winter Relocation

If you're planning a move to southern Idaho, here's a piece of advice I wish someone had given me.

Don't schedule your pod delivery on Christmas Day.

Or if you do — and circumstances being what they are, sometimes you don't have a choice — build in so much time buffer that an eight-hour delay still leaves you daylight and dry weather to work with.

We did not have that buffer.

The U-Pack pod that was supposed to arrive between 8am and noon on Christmas showed up a little after 8pm. What should have been most of a day of loading in Flagstaff winter sunshine became two hours of loading in the dark, and then it started snowing.

I took this photo of the trailer in our driveway that night. It's not a triumphant image. It's a very tired man's documentary record of a moving situation that was not going according to plan.

The Ramp Problem

Here's what nobody mentions about moving pods and semi-trailers: not all ramps are created equal.

I'd expected a flat, wide loading surface that we could roll furniture up easily. What we got was a narrow ramp with cleats — not ideal for large furniture, impossible for one specific piece.

The piano.

Our piano was too wide for that ramp. It wasn't going on the truck that night, and possibly not at all without recruiting an army of people willing to lift rather than roll it.

At some point in a move like this, you make peace with the things that aren't going to go perfectly and you focus on getting the essential items secured. The piano was going to require a plan B. Everything else could be figured out on the fly.

Moving Six Daughters

Somewhere in the preparation for this move — 26 days out — I wrote in my blog about the particular challenge of organizing six daughters and getting them to pack.

I'll leave the details to your imagination. What I'll say is that our family of eight moving from Arizona to Idaho with five vehicles (the family van, the Jeep, an old pickup, a Volvo that had been given to us after a house fire, and a Suburban I'd bought back from the insurance company for $400 after they totaled it) was a logistical operation of genuine complexity.

Each vehicle needed to be cleaned, loaded, organized, and road-ready for a 750-mile drive to a new state in December.

We got it done. Not on the timeline or in the conditions we'd planned for — but we got it done.

What the Chaos Taught Me About Moving to Idaho

Here's the thing I took from that Christmas move.

Every family that makes a significant relocation has a story like this. Something goes wrong. The timeline slips. The logistics turn complicated. The weather doesn't cooperate.

And then you arrive. And the property is there, and the sky is there, and the life you moved for starts becoming real — and the story of how you got there becomes something you tell with a laugh instead of a grimace.

The families I work with who are relocating to Magic Valley sometimes worry about getting the move perfect. I try to tell them: the move doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to happen. Southern Idaho is patient. It will be there when you arrive, in whatever condition you arrive in.

Just maybe don't schedule the pod for Christmas.

📞 Dr. Ron Jones | 208-712-8386 — I've done the relocation. I know what the arrival looks like. Let me help you plan yours — including timing that actually works.

Photo taken by Dr. Ron Jones on moving day, Christmas 2014, Flagstaff, Arizona — the night before the drive north to Idaho.

Dr. Ron Jones | Rim & River Real Estate | rimandriver.com | 208-712-8386