If you’ve been around for a bit, when it comes to PCSing, your entire life becomes a holding pattern. Here’s how to spot it and why every military family you know is just nodding in sympathy.
You’re crying in a Lowe’s and saying, “I’ll deal with it after the move,” like it’s a valid life plan.
This isn’t just a store trip gone sideways. It’s the perfect snapshot of PCS limbo. You didn’t even come for anything dramatic. Wall anchors, maybe. A lightbulb for the hallway fixture. But somewhere between aisle seven and plumbing, you realize you’ve been living in a weird, half-packed purgatory for weeks. Nothing feels urgent unless it’s about leaving this place, and even that urgency is undercut by the knowledge that the finish line keeps shifting.
The fridge-as-exhibit A
If an inspector walked into your kitchen right now, they could date your PCS status to the week just by opening the fridge.
There’s a single pickle floating in brine, a jar of salsa with no chips in sight, and a half-empty carton of milk you keep forgetting to throw out. The freezer is a mix of frostbitten mystery meat and half-empty bags of frozen peas. (Why is it always peas?)
Cooking is an act of archaeology. Every meal is a question: What can be made from one egg, a scoop of peanut butter, and a bottle of soy sauce? And every answer ends the same way — We’ll get real food after the move.
It’s not just a joke anymore. It’s the family mantra, repeated over cereal dinners, cold pizza breakfasts, and late-night DoorDash orders you swore you wouldn’t make.
The junk drawer collapse
No junk drawer survives PCS prep. At some point, someone gets the bright idea to “tackle it early,” and within an hour, the whole system of storing random bits of string is destroyed.
The batteries are in a Ziploc. The paperclips are in with the takeout menus. The spare keys have been “put somewhere safe,” which means they’re now lost forever and always, and you’re not going to find them until you’re unpacking three states away.
From there, the migration begins. Kitchen tools in the bathroom. Extension cords in the pantry. Nothing has a home anymore because every drawer, every shelf, every cabinet is in play. But because you’re PCSing, you tell yourself it’ll be fine. It’ll all work out.
This question that stops you cold
At least one kid will ask, “When do we move to our real house?” Not in a teasing way. They actually mean it because to them, your current house is your old house and therefore no longer exists.
This will be the moment you realize the whole family is already living with one foot out the door. Half your conversations are about the next duty station — what the new house might look like, whether there’s snow, if the playground will be bigger.
Your brain is there too. The Google tabs prove it: cost of living in [future base city], best schools near base, how to ship a kayak cross-country, is it illegal to drive with a lemon tree in the back seat.
You’re still at the old duty station, but mentally? You’ve been gone for weeks.
Donation piles crowd every entryway
It started as a couple of sweaters and a coffee mug. Now it’s a small mountain of broken appliances, toys no one will admit to owning, clothes from three duty stations ago, and the vacuum you swore you’d fix before the last PCS.
The pile has its own zip code. The kids use it as a fort. Visiting friends leave their coats on it without asking. At this point, it’s less “donations” and more “emotional support landfill.” You know you need to downsize, but the overwhelm of it all keeps getting in the way.
Time no longer exists
Every date you’re given is written in pencil, and someone else is holding the eraser.
Pack-out day? “Tentative.” Travel day? “Pending.” Inspection? “Maybe Tuesday… unless Housing calls and says otherwise.” Even the few hard deadlines you think you can trust will shift without warning.
So you stop caring about the big picture and live by the clock in tiny, high-stakes bursts: the two-hour window the movers might show up, the fifteen minutes between when TMO says they’re coming and when they actually knock, the exact moment you have to sign for the empty house keys.
Every change in the timeline sets off a chain reaction that you know is coming, but still, somehow, aren’t prepared for. The calls to reschedule cleaning, cancel appointments, shift travel reservations always ends the same way: with takeout, because the kitchen is either packed, half-packed, or full of food you swore you’d eat before you left.
Dismantling your routine, one step at a time
PCS season will dismantle your routines, rewrite your priorities, and drop your life into a holding pattern that lasts until the last box is unpacked. The chaos isn’t something you “get through.” For weeks, it’s the only thing that feels normal. Meals happen when they happen. Sleep happens if it happens. You keep saying “after the move” like it’s a magic date on the calendar, but deep down, you know that date will slide, and slide again.
Eventually, you stop thinking about the finish line. You’re too busy digging through half-packed boxes looking for the dog’s leash.
