Nearly eight years ago to the date, Emily Henderson offered me a job as her new editorial director and changed my life. At the time, my then-fiancé Charles (now husband) and I were living in South Florida, and the “welcome to the team!” email spawned a flurry of neck-break-speed logistics over a short six-week period common with moving cross-country. It wasn’t one we were expecting by any means, but we had long been talking about uprooting for someplace new. Never did I think it would be 2,500 miles away…removed from family, friends, and everything we’ve ever known; but we were game and boy are we glad we took that leap. 

Our time in Los Angeles has been a wild ride. Multiple new jobs, new friends, a pandemic, parenthood, and so much more. I grew a person (Evelyn!), birthed a whole design book (coming at you Fall 2026!), survived wildfires and earthquakes—and traffic. Ohhh, the traffic. As it happens when you’re stretched beyond your zone of comfort, we’ve grown as individuals, as a couple, and as humans. I care so deeply about things that were completely out of my purview before 2018, and I have our time in California to thank for that. 

And now, this chapter of our lives is coming to an end. 

As I write this, I’m surrounded by piles of bubble wrap and garbage bags full of donations, box inventory lists swirling around my head day and night, Zillow notifications pinging me with new rentals to check out. We’re in the midst of another cross-country move, back to the coast that bred us. When you’ve been a part of a community that you love wholeheartedly for almost a decade, it’s hard to imagine what your life will be like outside of it, but we decided that our long-term needs as a family will be better served elsewhere. 

So, Why Did We Decide to Move…& Where?

You know that saying, “Pick a random place on the map, move your entire family there, and everything will fall into place?” No? Doesn’t ring a bell? Well, that’s what we decided to do…sort of. When we first got to California, we suspected it wouldn’t be the final stop on the scavenger hunt of our lives. We agreed to stay for as long as it felt right, and to be honest, there wasn’t a specific moment that screamed at us to leave. It was a million tiny things. The $30 parking garage ticket at the pediatrician’s office. The two-hour commute for my husband when he had to show his face in the office. Jobs slowly becoming uncomfortable.

Big cities come with a lot of pros, of course, but the cons start wearing on you more and more the older you get, especially when you’re raising a kid. But the biggest factor? The path to homeownership felt as futile to us as pouring water into a leaky bucket. Everyone is feeling the extreme pinch of the rising cost of housing—er, everything—across the country, and in LA, where we are, it’s laughable. Homes in my area run you about $1 million a bedroom, and that’s not an exaggeration. 

Where could we go that was still somewhat affordable, had work for my husband as an architect, provided quality education for my girl, and actually felt like a place we wanted to live as a mixed-race family? That was NOT an easy equation to solve. Atlanta was at the top of our list since before we ever came to the West Coast, given that my best friend lived there and we had always enjoyed our time when visiting. 

But after our time in the hustle and bustle of the City of Angels, we wanted something slower and smaller than another major metropolitan. I put on my investigative journalist hat and narrowed in on a spot that seemed to check many of our boxes: Raleigh, North Carolina. 

What Made Us Decide On Raleigh

I had been to the state of North Carolina exactly two times before putting a pin on that city in my vision board. Once, nearly two decades ago, on a work trip to a city called Lillington, and again to High Point for the furniture market there. It was never on my radar, like…at all. My parents had brought it up a few times, as we have some extended family there on my dad’s side, but I always brushed off the remarks with little interest.

But then one day, as if I were a cartoon character and a lightbulb appeared above my head, Raleigh entered my brainspace and wouldn’t leave. I saw it everywhere: In the House Hunters episode I was watching, on street names and buildings, in conversations with strangers. Even here in Los Angeles, Raleigh was stalking my consciousness. Not one to ignore that kind of seemingly divine intervention, I started researching and comparing what that city had to offer with what we did or didn’t like about where we currently live.

It’s super important to take stock of the advantages of your existing life wherever you are, so you know what you’re not willing to give up when leaving it. Here were our “musts” we were trying to find elsewhere:

• Safety
• A sense of community (we have the most amazing neighbors here, with an annual block party, people checking in on us and our kid if they don’t see us around for too long, bags of hand-me-downs, and gifts for our girl every time we walk outside. It’s just a dream…that we can’t afford for the longhaul sadly)
• Access to lots and lots (and lots) of green spaces and parks
• Bike and walking paths
• Great schools
• Local family-friendly events
• Plenty of options for work for both Charles and me
• Being surrounded by lots of educated people

“But Arlyn, if where you live checks all those boxes, why are you leaving?!?” Allow me to remind you of the following: $1 million PER BEDROOM. We are currently topping out at nearly $4,000 a month for a 2-bedroom townhouse with a windowless storage room we use as an office. It’s just not sustainable anymore.

Owning a home, peace and serenity, proximity to family, and safety are paramount to us and what we want out of our lives. So after following the whisper in my brain to look into the Raleigh area, I realized it hit the mark in nearly every area. I let the information simmer in my brain for a while before leaning in hard to convince my husband to commit to the move. He had always agreed we needed to make a change, but he’s a Hesistant Harry classic overanalyzer who would need some mental massaging.

I put together a Powerpoint presentation complete with cost analyses—I literally made a one-for-one grocery order on Instacart at our supermarket and one there locally that felt comparable; I pulled the cost of things like pizza and takeout we normally eat here; I sourced rental properties and ran the numbers of how much we could save in a year toward a downpayment; I bookmarked a dozen or more homes that I even looked up jobs for my husband and researched employee-submitted salaries. Friends, I did my RESEARCH. And then I sat him down one night after we put our daughter to bed, slapped that presentation up on our flat screen, and walked him through, slide by slide.

By the end, he knew I was serious, and more importantly, right.

It was time to start planning…for real.

When We’re Going & What’s It Been Like Planning A Move

To give you a sense of our timeline, this has all been in the works for well over two years. Slowly marinating and bubbling along. We even booked a trip in the fall of 2024 to go visit and ensure it was everything the internet told us it was. Spoiler: It was way different from what we were envisioning, but not necessarily in a bad way. Then, last year at around this time, we decided fall 2025 would be our target move date. But then we panicked and felt rushed, so we pushed it to January 2026, with the intention that my husband would start job hunting beginning in September or October, and if anything came to be prior to the new year, we’d jump.

But as life happens, it got pushed a few more months, and here we still are. But fear not, because finally, the movers are booked, the car transporter is scheduled, our plane tickets are purchased, and the mayhem of packing began a few weeks ago.

Even with a years-long runway, it’s felt like such a whirlwind in the end. Every waking moment I’ve had since last fall has been spent looking up and interviewing preschools, comparing moving options (more on that in a second), reading Reddit for intel on neighborhoods, that kind of thing. I’m panting in exhaustion from it all, but all with a throughline of intense gratitude for even being able to consider changing our lives for the better. I fully recognize not everyone has this privilege.

How Much Is All This Costing?

The short of it: It’s very expensive to move, especially across the country. At the start of this process, I figured we’d just do the same thing we did when coming out from Florida, just in reverse. But things have changed since then.

When we moved out here to California, we rented a standard-size PODS (a 16-foot container). To my memory, because I cannot find a way to log into my old account and check, that was roughly $2,000 plus an additional hundred dollars every month we had it in storage while we looked for a place to live.

This time around? That same PODS was over $5,000. And because we had amassed more furniture and stuff since adding another body to our family count, we would need an additional half PODS to fit our things even after selling some things off. In total, after discounts were offered, our PODS quote was nearly $10,000. Add to that the cost of movers to load it up here properly (we had no interest in doing that ourselves and breaking out middle-aged backs), and the cost of movers to get it there to unload it, and it would likely be an additional $3,000. Now, I did read all the tricks on Reddit about how to get PODS to further discount your order, which involved mind tricks like pretending to cancel and all that jazz. But without the song and dance, a “low-cost” move for us was going to come in at around $13,000. Before we paid for our cars to be moved, or got on a plane, or rented a car, or put a deposit down on another place.

That just wasn’t settling right in my mind. Having to handle the logistics of the PODS (which we didn’t have any issues with the first time, but regularly get horrific reviews online for logistic issues, routing errors, shoddy container conditions, etc.), plus the logistics of two separate moving companies for that much money, left me wondering if there was a better way.

“Mallory used Roadway when she moved to New York. Ask her about it,” Jess suggested one day a few months back. Using a full-service mover felt completely out of reach to me, money-wise, not to mention the horror stories you hear about things going missing or huge after-the-fact charges being thrown at you unexpectedly. But how much more could it possibly cost than what the PODS would total in the end?

After rave reviews from Mallory and every influencer on the planet that has also used them, I reached out to Roadway for a quote, not really expecting it to be a viable option for us, but still hopeful. I got connected to my super helpful coordinator (shoutout to Rodrigo!), who patiently and thoroughly had me walk through every one of my rooms to create a rough-draft inventory list to build out a quote. It took about an hour of me sitting in the Ralph’s supermarket parking lot (poor timing on my behalf) to give him a clear picture of how much we were bringing with us. Almost immediately, he sent through a quote for around $10,000, including licensing and insurance, but not including packing, which we would be doing ourselves. “What’s the catch?” I wondered, assuming the price would change greatly along the way, expecting to be hit with an invoice twice that big at the end. Was that a lot of money? OF COURSE. My goodness. But it was still less than the PODS all-in with two sets of additional movers.

Unlike other cross-country moving companies, Roadway’s whole thing is transparent pricing. You can see it all over their verified reviews across Google, Yelp, BBB, and Trustpilot. I read so many of them, and they all commented about the service, the fair pricing, and the overall professionalism they deliver. Their trucks and teams are theirs, unlike other movers I’ve hired in the past that act more as third-party facilitators.

Sure, we haven’t finished the whole process yet since our move in still a few weeks away, but I promise to report back on how it all went. What I can say for now is how easy cataloging everything has been. My rep Rodrigo is a text or phone call away, and honestly, he’s been a friend and counselor in the transition. “Rodrigo, I forgot to add in our bikes and my daughter’s scooter, and we decided not to take the sectional,” I’ll message him. He simply updates the inventory list and updates the price instantly, so I can see where we are with everything. No guesses, no surprises.

(In full transparency, I asked Roadway if they would provide me with a lower price since I was a writer and could recommend them in any article that made sense. I’m by no means an influencer with any significant following, so I wasn’t banking on anything, but they generously offered me a discount on my total price. The $10,000 or so I mentioned earlier—which was actually brought down to about $8,500 per a manager deal before any partnership talks—was the quote without any reductions. And of course, every single move is different, with different inventory lists, longer or shorter distances, etc., and will likely be very different for you. But I like to get a ballpark while doing my research, and wanted to share that.)

What We’re Selling, What We’ve Given Away & The Chaos Of Packing Up A Life 

As someone with packrat tendencies, this has been SO hard for me. I started this move with the headspace that we would sell half our stuff to bring down the cost of the move, hoping to buy secondhand when we settled. I greatly underestimated how much I loved our things, or how many memories were attached to everything. My friend Sara would also have me add that I greatly underestimated the volume of stuff we have, hard stop (haha, I know she’s reading this). But I’m a grown-up, and I can do hard things.

After much thinking, I decided to get rid of some large pieces: Our sectional that we’ve had for seven years and has seen A LOT of life; our dining table and chairs; the big green pantry cabinet in my kitchen; our breakfast nook chairs; and a handful of other smaller things.

Even after all of that, we are still drowning in things. So I’ve given away dozens, I mean DOZENS of bags and boxes to local charity shops and my Buy Nothing group on Facebook. Every day, I’m placing at least 10 things outside for neighbors to come pick up. Or driving yet another load of bags to Salvation Army.

It feels incredibly overwhelming right now, but I know that once we’re on the other side of things, it’ll feel so good to have offloaded so many things we weren’t using. Thank you for your service, Stuff, but I don’t need you clogging up my life anymore.

Where We Are Right Now & What’s Left to Do

So, even with a moving truck arriving in about 12 days (AGH!!!!), we still have much to do. No, we do not have a place to live yet. Wild, I know. We booked an Airbnb to stay in the first week or two while we wait for our things to arrive, but the goal is that we will have a real address for them to deliver to. Finding a home through your phone without stepping foot into a place or neighborhood is absolutely anxiety-inducing for me, but it’s kind of what we have to do. We contemplated taking a weekend trip to look in person, but we couldn’t afford the time (or $$ spend) to do so with everything going on right now.

Since we don’t have a place to live, we can’t settle on a school for my kid yet. Or pick new physicians. Or join any neighborhood-centric groups to ask around about things. So far, we’re honing in on the Cary or Apex areas, but who knows! My husband is also still in the process of finding a job, with some good prospects, but that’s another part of the equation that isn’t locked in. All in all, my brain looks like that meme of Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia with all the red string going from point to point. UTTER CHAOS. But, even though my spirit can’t handle the anxiety, my brain is very good at thriving in madness. I’ve got this. It’s all going to be okay.

And that’s the long and short long of my big, life-changing news. The next few weeks will be full of a heady mix of sad goodbyes, last visits to our favorite spots, last days of preschool, more and more and more packing and wrapping and taping, and hopefully, finding a place to live.

I’ll report back soon from the other side, because with a new home comes fun new projects, new rooms to design and style, more color palettes to try out, and all the exciting things I can focus on once the hard part is over.

Oh, and if you’re a North Carolina local (especially in the Raleigh/Triangle area), PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE say hello in the comments. I could use words of encouragement, but also some new friends. 🙂

Until next time, friends…and stay tuned.