Relocating Our Family to Another State || Part One || Reno Blogger
It’s been just over 6 months that we have lived here in Reno, NV. Back on my last post about us moving (you can read that here) I let you guys know that I had never been to Reno nor have I ever relocated out-of-state with a young toddler-ish kid. Speaking of, what do they call 3-4 year olds? Not really a toddler, not really a “kid”. The in between toddler-ish kid. Yeah that sounds okay. But I digress. Moving out-of-state as a family of three was a…. learning experience to say the least. From strangers packing up our life in boxes for us… listing our first home purchased together, selling quickly and then being homeless for 3 months… to offers on homes falling through left and right to living in numerous hotels. This is a story that I hope will make you chuckle at all of the craziness we have endured. I couldn’t fit all of the insanity into one blog post so on this first blog post, I’ll divulge about how and why we moved to Reno and the initial part of relocating our family to another state.
Why we left Arizona
Simply put, Mitchell got a job offer with Tesla. We wanted to relocate closer to family and have been looking at ATL, Denver and even (briefly) Ohio. Nothing ever panned out. Jobs just didn’t fit within Mitchells expertise. We were open to leaving Arizona but never thought Reno would be the place we landed; it wasn’t ever on our radar.
Where were we headed to
Reno, NV. For those of you that said “where the heck is Reno?!” as you can see it is NOWHERE near Vegas. We are closer to San Francisco and Sacramento than Vegas. We are also in “Northern Nevada,” right on the border of California and a short road trip to Oregon. Additionally, Sparks is the actual city we moved to. Sparks is the city that is attached to Reno and is a popular choice amongst Tesla employees because it’s just a wee bit closer to the Gigafactory than other locations around Reno.
Some reading material to give you some more insight on Reno
So you want to move to Reno? 8 things you need to know first
12 Things You Need to Know About Reno, NV Before You Move Here
GETTING READY TO MOVE
So it’s always funny how things work out. April 2017 was a very difficult month for me as Gentry was in his third preschool/daycare and it wasn’t working out (which is another story for another blog post.) I was still at Bank of America and dreading drop offs with Gentry at school. We made a family decision that I would try this whole SAHM thing again and pull him out of school. Around this exact same time, Mitchell was solicited by a recruiter for Tesla. It was an odd solicitation because he was just finishing up a class in college where he did a whole report on Elon Musk. He looked up to the guy and thought he was nothing short of a genius. I found myself with the same thoughts about Mr. Musk so it was quite ironic to be getting an email from recruitment at Tesla to join the Gigafactory in Sparks, NV just outside Reno, NV. But Reno? Reno of all places? What’s in RENO?! We can’t possibly want to move there.
then these showed up.
But first, we must sale our home. Argh.
Listing our home
May 2017 was full of interviews with Tesla. If they weren’t shuttling Mitchell from Arizona to Nevada, they were interviewing him on the phone. It was a pretty intense process. At the end of May/beginning of June (it was honestly all a blur), Mitchell accepted an offer. We reached out to our Realtor Michelle to begin the (quick) process of selling our home.
In order to list our home, our realtor Michelle gave us specific instruction to declutter….everything. Nothing on the counters, clean to the best we can and leave the home if possible. For the pictures to use in the listing, we must draw all of our curtains and turn on all lights. We did all of the above and also added some (affiliate) Febreeze plug ins throughout the home and a jar of fresh cookies. By that time, I was officially a SAHM and Mitchell took his last month off of work so we were able to take a little family road trip. We made a beeline for SoCal and made it to Disneyland (which I’ll go into in a future blog post) so we didn’t have to keep leaving the home during showings. HOME OFFICIALLY LISTED. I can’t remember HOW many showings and offers we had within 24 hours but within 48 hours, we accepted an above listed offer. I still remember standing in line to meet Donald Duck and Mitchell getting the call about the offer we in turn accepted. It was a WHIRLWIND.
Purge, purge, purge.
When we came back from our mini family vacation, I started purging like a mad woman. We had a moving company that was going to come to pack up our belongings and then another moving company that would be the actual transportation of our goods to Reno. There are certain rules you must abide by with moving companies, one of them being NO liquids at ALL. No aerosols, no paint, no chemicals, no cleaning products, no shampoo, no peanut butter, no condiments, no alcohol…(some of our friends that will remain nameless sure enjoyed getting alllllll of our liquor haha) I mean I could go on. We pretty much had to either give away these items to friends or trash it. There was a LOT that we just didn’t have time to give away so that ended up in the trash/recycle. I do have to say it hurt a little knowing we were throwing some really good things away but damn it felt good to start fresh.
Networking BEFORE I arrived
Throughout this time, I feel like I didn’t even have time to focus on what was really happening. I was just focusing on the tasks I had to complete, I didn’t really go on a google hunt with things about Reno that I need to know (like the links I listed above.) BUT there is one thing that I did that I recommend to you especially if you are a Mom and/or an Entrepreneur: that is start networking ASAP. I utilized Facebook for this because it was quick and easy. I seriously had no time to go bananas on finding networking events or Meetup groups but I DID have time to click JOIN on a couple Facebook groups at night while winding down from the insane day. Here are a few of my local favorites:
Moms of Reno
TuesdaysTogether – Reno, NV
Mrs. LC Deals, Clearance, & Couponing
Pack up & Move Out
After gathering up all of our liquids, purging what I could, organizing certain things I wanted to be packed together, our movers came and packed up our belongings. WEIRDEST THING EVER: watching a stranger wrap up your stuff (even your unmentionables) and put them in boxes. It was just awkward to me but they reassured me that it was a normal thing to them and they can pack up this home in less than a day because they had no connection to the stuff they were packing. Made sense. And that they did. In less than a day, our life was all in boxes. The next day a moving truck would come and load up our stuff to transport – including our cars on flatbed trucks.
officially homeless, car-less and everything we own on a truck.
The next chapter of this story, I’ll let you in how we got to Reno and what the plan of attack was on finding housing. HINT: That’s where a lot of the insanity begins. Sign up below to get notified when the next post hits the blog.
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