I have a friend from university called Jo who has always been braver than me.
At nineteen she dyed her hair blue. At twenty-three she moved to California for a man she’d known for four months. Reader, she married him. And last year, with three kids, a dog and a husband who’d been offered a job on the other side of the Pacific, she moved the whole lot to Maui.
I, meanwhile, get nervous changing supermarkets.
So when she offered to tell me “absolutely everything” about moving a family to a Hawaiian island, I made a cup of tea, put my phone on loud and let her talk. What follows is her story, lightly tidied, with her blessing.
“Sort the Dog Before You Sort the House”
This was her very first message, and I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.
Hawaii is rabies free, and it protects that fiercely. The state’s animal quarantine programme has been running since 1912 and covers every dog, cat and other carnivore arriving in the islands.
There’s a fast route that lets pets be released quickly, sometimes straight from the airport, but only if a strict set of steps is finished in the right order before you arrive. Jo started months ahead and still called it “the most stressful admin of my entire life”.
Her voice note on this went on for six minutes. The summary was: microchip, vaccinations, a blood test, a waiting period, and paperwork sent ahead. Miss something and your dog could be in quarantine for months.
“Honestly,” she said, “the kids were easier to move than Biscuit.”
Why Everything Goes by Boat
The next thing that blew my mind was how the rest of their stuff got there.
There’s no driving a van onto an island in the middle of the Pacific. Everything goes by ship, and the ships run to schedules. A government review of domestic shipping notes that routes between the US mainland and places like Hawaii are served by only a few carriers.
In plain English, Jo explained, you can’t just ring round for a cheaper boat next Tuesday. You book onto a sailing, and if you miss it, you wait for the next one.
That made choosing who handled the move far more important than she’d expected.
Why She Hired Maui Movers Instead of a Broker
This was the part where Jo got properly fired up.
She got several quotes when they were planning the move. She said a couple of them turned out not to be movers at all, just middlemen who pass your job to someone else and take a cut.
In the end they went with Wailea Movers, a Kihei company whose licensed local team handles moves around the islands and to and from the mainland directly, and whose licence numbers are right there on its website. For Jo, finding Maui movers who did the job themselves, rather than handing it on, was the whole ball game.
The difference matters more than I’d have guessed. According to FMCSA guidance in the US, a moving company owns trucks and has staff who handle your move, while a broker simply arranges transport by hiring another company, and doesn’t take responsibility for your belongings.
Jo’s tip, which I’ve now repeated to at least three people who are not moving anywhere: ask straight out, “Are you a mover or a broker?” She said the proper movers answered in one word.
She also liked that they could pack everything, take furniture apart and put it back together at the other end, and store things if the dates didn’t line up. With three children and a dog, she said, “I didn’t want to be the one wrapping forty plates in newspaper.”
The Weeks With No Furniture
Here’s the bit I found hardest to imagine.
Their things came over from the mainland, and it took weeks. Jo said it was about six in their case. The family arrived first, with suitcases and not much else, and camped in an empty house.
Air mattresses. Paper plates. One pan. The kids thought it was the best holiday ever. Jo described week four as “a character-building experience I would not like to repeat”.
Her advice, which I’ve written down in case I ever do anything this brave:
- Pack a proper “first few weeks” suitcase with bedding, towels, basic kitchen bits and chargers.
- Keep medicines, passports and important papers with you, never in the container.
- Budget for cheap basics on arrival that you’ll replace later.
- Sort storage in advance if the new house isn’t ready when your things arrive.
Apparently, if you’re moving between the islands later, it’s quicker. But the big move from the mainland is a real test of patience.
The Sun Is Not Messing About
When I asked what surprised her most about daily life, I expected her to say the cost of groceries. (She did say that. Loudly.) But her real answer was the sun.
Jo is pale. Her children are paler. She thought years of California living had prepared them. They had not.
The US Environmental Protection Agency’s UV Index guidance has a rule she now lives by: if your shadow is shorter than you are, UV levels are high. In Hawaii, that covers a lot of the day.
She buys sun cream in bulk now, and the kids wear long-sleeved swim tops by default. “I look like I’m dressing them for a sailing race,” she said, “but no one’s burnt since.”
Would She Do It Again?
Yes. Instantly. Which surprised me a bit, given the dog saga and the air mattresses.
She misses proper tea. She misses being able to pop to see family. She misses winter coats, weirdly, and bonfire night.
But she said the thing she was most scared of, that the kids would be miserable, never happened. They were in the sea within a week and calling the island home within a month.
Her final message was this: “The romantic bit takes care of itself. It’s the boring logistics that make or break it. Do the paperwork, check who you’re hiring, and plan for the gap.”
What I’ve Taken From It
I’m not moving to Hawaii. My idea of an adventure is trying a new flavour of crisps.
But Jo’s story stuck with me, because the lessons work for any big move with kids, even one to the next town.
Start the hard admin first. Check that whoever is moving your life is actually doing the job themselves. Plan for the weeks when things don’t line up. And pack more sun cream than you think you need.
Also, maybe don’t dye your hair blue at nineteen. Or do. It seems to have worked out fine for her.
Have you ever moved somewhere a long way away with kids? I’d love to hear your “first few weeks” stories.