How?
What it took to move our family across the ocean.
There was so much work that went into this move. Most people could see the major moving parts—decluttering, selling our house, packing. But there was a whoooole iceberg’s worth of work going on beyond that. Some people have asked how we did it, so here are the basic steps that we followed.
Researched our options.
When we were tossing around the idea of moving abroad, we didn’t know that we were going to land in Portugal. None of us qualify for any kind of citizenship-by-descent type things, so that wasn’t an option. We wanted a country that offered digital nomad visas, allowed the whole family to come over at the same time (with no waiting period), and in which homeschooling is legal. The homeschool piece won’t be necessary for many families, but I didn’t want the kids to have to adjust to living in a new country AND going to a traditional, public school for the first time. The next things were more flexible, but still important: a reasonable cost of living for my income, adequate or excellent healthcare, and moderate climate/weather. This ruled out places like Mexico (too hot for us) and Canada for us (too cold and/or expensive for us), and we focused on Portugal.
Visit.
The more we learned and researched about Portugal, the more it seemed like a good fit for our family. People talked about the slower pace of life, the weather, how friendly the people were. They also spoke about difficulties with bureaucracy, immigration issues, and generally how complicated the process is. While we were preparing for our move, legislation in Portugal changed the citizenship requirements, so we also knew laws and rules around immigration could change at any time. We still decided this was still the country that best fit what we wanted, so we altered our travel plans to spend 3 weeks visiting Portugal. It’s not possible for all families, but if at all possible, visiting the country you’re considering moving to is pretty major. It won’t give a complete experience of what it’ll be like living there, but you can at least get an impression. It’s a vibe check. We spent 3 weeks exploring the country, meeting other immigrant families, meeting Portuguese families, and considering it all.
Decide.
We talked about it, a lot. I made spreadsheets of information, pros and cons lists, estimated expenses of moving and living abroad vs staying, etc. There were a lot of therapy sessions talking through it, conversations with friends, with family, with the kids. We weighed as many factors that we could reasonably predict. In the end, moving within the year was the best choice with the information we had.
Tell people.
The timing of this will be different for everyone. For us, when we got serious about considering this move, we told the kids first then clued in important people in our lives. Not everyone was supportive, many people didn’t think we’d actually go through with it, and some were excited. Once we made the official decision and updated everyone with our move date, people had a whole new wave of reactions.
Apply for visas.
I applied for a digital nomad visa for myself, and Jon and the kids applied for dependent family member visas. We made the decision to hire a relocation company, which has been amazing. It wasn’t cheap, but we decided it would be well worth the money to have someone support us with structure and experience. It has saved us from making several potentially expensive mistakes, and gave us a huge source of logistical information. I didn’t have to spend my mental energy trying to keep track of all the things, because they already had a system in place and walked us through it.
We applied in May 2026, and received our visa approvals 1 week before our flights departed in July 2025.
Shed your old life.
We decided to sell or donate almost everything. I knew that we could ship things over in a sea crate, and various other methods and most would take several months. There would also be the navigation of customs to deal with. My thought process was that if we could live without it for several months, we didn’t really need it. We have one small storage unit back in the US where we kept sentimental items (who knew just how many pictures and photo albums I had!), the kids could keep bins of things they were not ok getting rid of but not important enough to bring, backpacking supplies I knew I’d want again in the future, etc. We ended up flying out with 20 checked bags of our belongings…and that’s it. That’s everything we have with us, and it was both grief-inducing and a massive relief.
Sell.
Many people told us to keep the house and use it as rental income. It’s a great idea for a lot of people, but it wasn’t for us. We wanted the money from the sale of the house to help fund the move, to give us a financial buffer to ease my mind in regards to being the sole income, and we didn’t want to have to deal with renters.
Selling our house was a whole process in itself. We sold our house, then moved into a short term rental for 6 weeks. It wasn’t what we originally planned, but it worked out even better. It gave us an opportunity to do a first wave of decluttering, of loosening our roots.
We spent 3 nights in a hotel while we finished up last minute packing/purging/cleaning, which was also a great move. The moving around was so hard, but it also helped with structuring the decluttering, and gradually letting go of our beloved places.
Say goodbye (or, see you later!).
We hosted a Going Away party and invited pretty much everyone we know. Literally. The kids asked to invited everyone they had ever met. That wasn’t entirely possible, but we tried our best. It was a great way to celebrate, enjoy time with friends and family, and helped us see people one last time before we left. I planned it for about a month before we flew out, and the timing worked well. We crammed in tons of last minute goodbyes after the party too, but the party helped a lot.
We also had a timeline for the kids that ended up being helpful for us too. It was a visual timeline of big events we had coming up (move out of the house, going away party, camping trips), the last dates we would see certain people, and things we planned to do upon arrival (gelato, castles and beaches were high on that list).
Travel to your new home.
We hired a car (actually, it was a party bus. That was the only vehicle large enough to transport 4 people, 2 cats, 20 checked bags, and 2 carryons…the kids thought it was great) to take us to the airport. We didn’t know anyone with a big enough vehicle to take us AND we knew how emotional/difficult it was going to be and didn’t want to manage that going into the flight. I had prepaid for the checked bags and cats, so that went smoothly (except for when our doorstop alarm got triggered and deafened everyone within a 100 foot radius until I could find which bag it was in).
We also hired a car for when we arrived in Portugal. It was a highly recommended company, and they met us after baggage claim. (It was hard to get the bags, cats and kids through baggage claim, but we managed. The Youngest mayyy have been pushing his own cart of 5 big bags stacked high enough he couldn’t really steer, but it worked out ok with no injuries, and nothing broken!) The driver helped with our luggage after customs, stopped at the grocery store for us to get the essentials, and even stopped for us to get McDonald’s for the kids. He helped us unload once we arrived at our new house, after about 24 hours’ of travel.
Prepare for jet lag. Prepare for boredom, hunger, tears, nerves, and all the things.
Adjust and acclimate.
(that’s a whole other post— that’ll have to wait until I get that figured out!)
The paperwork and logistics don’t end with the visa process. We are now waiting for our immigration appointment here to get our residency permits. So, more paperwork, and more complicated government steps. The relocation company is still helping us prepare for this, but there are many more unknown, moving parts for this.
General packing lists:
Cookware & kitchen things (including my measuring cups and spoons—I wasn’t prepared to convert every recipe to metric just yet)
A suitcase full of our favorite snacks (think chik fil a sauce, gluten free crackers, and tootsie rolls)
Each kid got a bag of toys/boys/whatever they wanted. They made interesting choices.
Clothes, for all seasons
Pet supplies
Work supplies
Homeschool curriculum and supplies not available digitally
Electronics
Hiking gear
Linens
Board games
Things I wish we brought:
More snacks, more “safe” (for our food intolerances) baking ingredients
Cleaning supplies that I like, especially genuinely unscented things. Everything here is scented, even the things labeled ‘unscented…’