An Honest Timeline of Every PCS Move From Orders to Unpacking

You’ve received orders. The machine is now in motion. Here’s an honest look at what the next several months of your life will actually look like, beyond the official checklist.

Month One After Orders Drop

Week 1: Excitement. You google the new duty station obsessively. You join Facebook groups for spouses there. You create Pinterest boards for your future home that you haven’t seen yet. The kids either celebrate or mourn depending on whether they like their current school.

Week 2: Research phase. You learn things about your new location. Some good. Some concerning. You discover it’s the hottest place in America, or the coldest, or inexplicably far from any major airport. You begin the bargaining process in your mind.

Week 3: The to-do list emerges. Medical records. School records. Pet vaccinations. The car that needs serviced before a cross-country drive. The dentist appointments you’ve been postponing for six months that now must happen immediately.

Week 4: You contact TMO and receive a move date that conflicts with everything. You negotiate. You lose. You rearrange your entire life around the military’s preferred timeline.

Month Two Through Three

The purge begins. You open closets you’ve been ignoring since the last PCS. You find things that don’t belong to you, possibly from the previous occupants, possibly from a duty station two moves ago. You wonder how you accumulated three broken vacuums.

Every piece of furniture becomes a calculation. Is this worth the weight allowance? Will it fit in the new house you haven’t seen? Could you just buy a new one there for less than the hassle of moving this one?

You make trips to Goodwill. You make trips to the dump. You make trips to that one friend who takes all the things you’re trying to give away. You still have too much stuff.

The Week Before Movers Arrive

Panic sets in. The house is chaos. Nothing is labeled correctly. You’ve lost track of what’s packed and what’s essential items you’re keeping out. The children’s toys have multiplied overnight.

You deep clean things that will just get dirty again. You patch holes you swore were there when you moved in. You argue about the garage situation with your spouse because somebody has to deal with whatever’s happened in there.

Sleep becomes optional. Meals become whatever’s still in the freezer and must be consumed before the power gets disconnected.

Moving Day

The movers arrive either extremely early or concerningly late. There is no in-between.

You watch strangers touch everything you own. They wrap things that don’t need wrapping. They question your box labeling system. They discover that broken vacuum collection and silently judge.

Everything takes longer than the estimate. Your kids are either helpful or chaotic agents of destruction who must be contained. The pets have decided this is the worst day of their lives.

By evening, you’re standing in an empty house that doesn’t feel like yours anymore. This is normal. This always happens. You feel it anyway.

The Travel Phase

However you’re getting there, it’s an adventure. Road trips with kids become survival missions. Flights with pets require planning on par with military operations. Hotels along the way range from acceptable to concerning.

You eat fast food because that’s what’s available. You argue about podcasts versus music versus silence. Someone gets carsick at the worst possible moment. Someone else has to use the restroom exactly when you’ve reached the middle of nowhere.

You will remember this part fondly someday. Not today. Someday.

Arrival at the New Duty Station

The housing situation is either better than expected or a disaster. There is no middle ground. You either walk in and think “we can make this work” or you stand in the doorway questioning every life choice that led here.

The neighborhood either welcomes you or watches from windows. Both scenarios are equally unsettling.

You need to buy things. So many things. Curtain rods, again. Cleaning supplies, again. That one adapter because the outlets are slightly different for no logical reason.

Waiting for Your Stuff

This is the wilderness period. You’re living on air mattresses and camp chairs, eating on paper plates, wearing the same five outfits on rotation. The delivery window is “sometime in the next three weeks” which is not helpful for planning anything.

You discover what you can actually live without. Turns out, it’s a lot. You question why you own so much stuff in the first place. You will forget this revelation by the next PCS.

Delivery Day

Different movers arrive with your things. They unload with varying degrees of care. You check boxes for damage while simultaneously directing where furniture goes in a house you’ve lived in for five days.

Things are broken. They’re always broken. You document everything for the claim you’ll file and maybe receive compensation for in eight months.

The unpacking begins. It never truly ends.

The First Month in Place

You’re functional but not settled. You know where the commissary is but not the good coffee shop. You’ve met your neighbors but don’t remember their names. The kids are adjusting, which means regular meltdowns for approximately six weeks.

Your spouse is absorbed into work immediately. You’re left holding everything else together, as usual.

Three Months In

This is home now. The boxes are mostly unpacked (except those three in the garage you’re pretending don’t exist). You’ve found your people. The kids have found their people. The routines have formed.

You’ll do this again in two to three years. But for now, you’re here. You made it.

Time to start the Pinterest board for the next place.