Starting from zero (again)

I am about to leave the home I have had for the last 7 years. Not just the home — the country too. After 13 years abroad, I am moving back to Spain. We are moving the whole family to Madrid and leaving behind Amsterdam, a city that has been home for many years and has shaped so much of the life we have today.

Moving is never only about boxes. It is about leaving behind a life you built from scratch: school runs, friendships, jobs, favourite places, and routines that took years to feel normal — and then, somehow, having to build them again somewhere else.

I have done this before, quite a few times, actually. Outside Spain, I have lived in many other countries: Suriname, France, Panama, Jamaica, and The Netherlands.

I used to think moving was easy: pack your things, organise the paperwork, say goodbye, get on a plane, and start again.

But this time I am doing it with two kids and a business to carry with me. There are schools to think about, routines to protect, a home to build, and an entire apartment to move across countries.

And perhaps the biggest difference is that I know now that you never really start from zero.

You take everything with you: the experience, the people, the lessons, the things you have learned about yourself — and, of course, far too much stuff.

The logistics of moving

It is never easy to move out of a home. This time, we are not just moving boxes. We are moving our entire apartment: furniture, bicycles, a car, and a storage room filled with things we somehow accumulated over seven years.

Our last move was completely different. We had around 30 boxes and moved from one furnished apartment to another. This time, we are selling some furniture, keeping the rest, transporting all our belongings, and then building a new home from the ground up. Which means a lot more planning — and a lot more decisions.

Our system

My husband and I are running this move around 3 principles:

1. Shared Tasks: We have one long admin checklist in our Reminders app, with tasks assigned by name. We have 3 specific main tasks: Kids, Admin & Home, with subtasks on each type. Seeing the list slowly get smaller is its own small relief.

2. Preparing the apartment before the movers come: We are selling furniture, repairing walls, taking down décor, removing lamps, clearing cupboards, and getting everything ready before moving day. The goal is simple: make moving day as easy as possible.

3. Protecting the kids' routine: Until the very end, we are trying to keep their days as normal as possible. I have created a calendar for the oldest so he can count down the days. I want the move to feel like a transition — not like their entire world suddenly disappears.

The things I am doing before we leave

One lesson I have learned from moving countries is not to procrastinate on paperwork. I have separated folders in my email and my laptop by country, and subfolders for each topic.

So, what's important to think about when moving out? Keeping medical records, dental records, financial documents, school reports, insurance documents...

I have a list of every document I need to request, and file everything (digitally / physically) before we go, for each member of the family.

The same goes for packing; first, we need to downsize:

1. Clothes go to friends or are sold through second-hand market websites.

2. Furniture we are not keeping is sold to a second-hand market websites.

3. And everything else has to answer the question: is this worth taking with us? And in here we apply the principle keep, donate, sell, discard.

   
   

When you move countries, every object has a cost. It costs money to transport, space to store, and energy to pack and unpack. So we are trying to be efficient by deciding what to keep, donate, sell or discard beforehand. If we haven't used something in a year and it doesn't have real sentimental value, we are trying to let it go.

There is something emotional about this too. Some objects represent a period of our life, and getting rid of them can feel a little like getting rid of the memory. But I remind myself that the memory doesn't live in the object.

And when it comes to the actual move, I am packing a couple of suitcases with everything we will need for the first few days: toiletries, medicines, clothes, important documents, laptops, toys for the kids... Only the essentials, as the moving truck won't take too long to arrive.

Getting to know our new place

Even before moving to the new place, we already had the floor plan and thought about where everything would go once we land in the new apartment. I have some ideas about the layout of the furniture and what kind of storage we will need.

But I am deliberately not buying anything yet. I want to be in the apartment first, take some days to understand the layout, and then take decisions.

You can calculate everything on a floor plan, but you cannot completely understand a space until you stand inside it.

So for now, I have a mental picture of our new home, a long list of measurements, and several ideas saved on my phone. The rest can wait.

Starting from zero — but not really

The funny thing about moving so many times is that you become very good at starting again.

You learn how to find a supermarket in a new city, how to make friends, how to navigate a new school system, how to find your favourite coffee shop, how to turn an empty apartment into a home.

But you also learn that you never really start from zero.When we arrive in Madrid, we will have to build new routines and make new friends. The kids will have new schools. We will have to figure out our new neighbourhood, our new commute, our new everyday life.

But we are not the same people who arrived in Amsterdam 7 years ago. We are bringing everything those seven years gave us, and maybe that is what makes this move different.

I am not leaving one life behind and starting another. I am taking one life with me and building the next chapter around it.

For now, though, there are still boxes to pack, furniture to sell, paperwork to finish, and a (shorter) list in my Reminders app.

Excited about what's coming next!