An assortement of beautiful decorated donuts on a pink table. Photo is an ariel view.

I Had 48 Hours to Move Across the World—Here’s How I Made It Happen

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My husband’s a professional hockey player and we move a lot for his career. But I never expected I’d only have 48 hours to pack up and move from Canada to Denmark.

Here’s how we pulled it off.

We got the call that we needed to be in Denmark in 48 hours

It was a Thursday when my husband signed a contract with his new team.

“Can you be here this weekend for practice?” his coach had asked him over speakerphone.

My head snapped in his direction and I narrowed my eyes as if to say, “are you out of your mind?”

But we both knew it wasn’t really a question.

“Yes, we can.”

We listed out everything we would need

Our first step was to sit down and brainstorm everything we’d need for our life in Denmark.

Clothing and shoes were obvious, but I also wanted to make sure I had other essentials, like my pasta roller. (Yes, a pasta roller is an essential.)

And because we had a dog, we needed to make sure she had everything as well, like enough food to transition her to a new diet in case we couldn’t find the same food she was on.

We also needed copies of my husband’s contract, medications, and paperwork for our dog. Which brings me to my next task:

We called our vet and begged for an emergency appointment

I couldn’t hop on a flight unless our dog was cleared to leave the country.

And for that, we needed to see our vet.

Thankfully, the vet understood our time crunch and squeezed us in to get our dog ready to fly. Once she was cleared by our vet, we rushed to get the certificate stamped by the Government of Canada.

We did absolutely all our laundry

We needed clean clothes before we could pack. Plus, we didn’t want to leave any dirty laundry behind. We had towels, bedding, and clothes in the laundry for hours on end.

You don’t realize how much laundry you have until you need to do it all at once…

I emailed my clients and let them know I’d need a week off

I knew the next week was going to go by in a blur and I wouldn’t have time for work. Rather than try to squeeze work in, I let my clients know what was going on and told them I’d have all my deliverables to them the following week.

Thankfully, they understood, so I turned on my out-of-office autoresponder and closed my laptop.

We packed ruthlessly

Remember the list from earlier? This is where it came in handy. We had no time to pick and choose what we wanted to take with us. If it was on the list, it made its way into our suitcases. If not, too bad.

We rolled our (now clean) clothes and packed military-style. When we were done, we weighed our suitcase to make sure it wasn’t the limit.

With a few pounds to spare, I grabbed a few final items and zipped everything up.

We cleaned our home and made sure it was ready for the winter

We vacuumed, mopped, dusted, and emptied the fridge and freezer. (My parents took all our leftover food.)

We listed what was needed to be done to winterize the place and passed the list off to my dad who would be taking care of it while we were gone.

I purchased travel insurance

Although my husband had a visa in process, mine wasn’t going to be ready for another couple of months. And until then, I was considered a tourist without access to free health care. So, I purchased 90-day travel insurance to cover me while I waited for my visa to get approved.

We organized one last dinner with my family

I didn’t have time to say goodbye to all my friends, and I wanted to save the few hours I had left for my family. So, we organized one big family dinner to say goodbye to everyone.

I made a final pre-depature list

The night before, I sat down and made a final list of everything we needed to do in the morning before our afternoon flight. I included absolutely everything so we didn’t miss a beat. That way, we could just wake up and move our way down the list with as little stress as possible.


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