The boxes are half packed, the rooms echo, and somewhere ahead is a door you have not opened yet. Moving house is one of the most ordinary big events in a life, and dreams of it tend to arrive in seasons when nothing is actually moving at all. They often leave behind a curious mix of excitement and loss.
| Variant | What the old books read | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Moving house | Poverty | Golden Wheel 1862 |
| Changing one's abode | Hurried news and hasty journeys | Miller 1901 |
| Entering a new house | Travelling far away | Yume handan jikkensho, 1908 |
| Moving into someone else's new house | Lucky | Zhougong dream book, 1880 |
| Packing a trunk | No moving entry; a pleasant trip | Miller 1901 |
| Moving back to the family home | No entry; visiting the old home as good news | Miller 1901 |
| Moving into a broken-down house | A beautiful wife | Zhougong dream book, 1880 |
What does it mean to dream about moving house?
The Western dream books were gloomy about moving. The Golden Wheel Dream-Book (1862) put it plainly: "To dream of moving your residence or place of business, under any circumstances, is a sign of poverty". Seeing other people move, it said, meant a relative falling on hard times and needing the dreamer's help. Miller's 1901 dream dictionary (Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted), under "Abode", read changing one's home as "hurried tidings" and hasty journeys, and, for a young woman who dreamed she had left her home, slander spread against her.
The Japanese and Chinese books were more interested in where the move led. The 1908 Yume handan jikkensho (『夢判斷實驗書』) has no entry for moving as such, but it reads entering a new house, 「新たなる家に入る」, as a sign of travelling far away (koma 43 of the National Diet Library scan, printed page 58). Moving house appears in that book mostly as an outcome of other dreams: being caught in the rain without an umbrella meant a change of house, and putting on new tabi socks meant a change of address. The Chinese Zhougong dream book (1880 print) is the most specific. Moving into another person's new house, it says, is lucky; a house shaken by the wind means a move; and moving into a broken-down house means a beautiful wife.
So the traditions disagree about the move itself, and agree only that it is worth a line. What follows sets out the scenes, then the psychology, which reads the house in a dream as the dreamer.
Before the move
These are readings from the old dream books, reported as history; no dream is a forecast.
What does it mean to dream of packing to move?
Boxes that never fill, or never stop filling; a wardrobe that keeps producing clothes; the van already outside. No book cited here has an entry for packing up a home. The nearest is Miller's "Trunk", where packing one's trunk was read as a pleasant trip soon to come, while a trunk with its contents thrown about in disorder was read as quarrels and a hasty, dissatisfying journey. Psychologists read packing as sorting: deciding what of the old life comes along. A dream of packing that never ends usually belongs to a change that has been decided but not yet made.
Where you moved to
What does it mean to dream of moving into a new house?
Empty rooms, a smell of fresh paint, light through windows without curtains. The 1908 Japanese book read entering a new house as travelling far away, and gave the reading without calling it lucky or unlucky. The Zhougong dream book read moving into someone else's new house as lucky. Miller read owning an elegant house as leaving one's home for a better one, with fortune kind to the dreamer. In the psychological reading, a new house is a new arrangement of the self: rooms not yet lived in, a life with space left in it.
What does it mean to dream of moving back to your parents' house?
The old bedroom, your things in the cupboard as if you had never left. None of the books cited here has an entry for moving back home. Miller, under "Home", read visiting one's old home as good news, and finding it cheerful and comfortable as harmony in the present home life. Psychologists read the childhood home as the self that was formed there. Moving back in, in a dream, often comes when an adult situation calls up an old role: the child, the one who looks after everyone, the one who is not yet allowed to decide.
What does it mean to dream of moving into a small or dirty house?
The new place turns out cramped, damp, falling apart, nothing like the listing. The Zhougong dream book read moving into a broken-down house as a sign of a beautiful wife, the old reading by opposites. The 1908 Japanese book read a dilapidated house, seen rather than moved into, as declining fortune, and Miller's "House" entry read old and dilapidated houses as failure in business. Psychologists usually hear disappointment rehearsed in advance: a worry that the change you are making will turn out smaller or shabbier than you hoped.
What does a moving house dream mean psychologically?
Jung's own famous dream of a many-storied house shaped his map of the psyche, and psychologists still read the house in dreams as the self: the known rooms as the lived life, the undiscovered rooms as capacities not yet entered. A move, in that reading, is a change of inner address. It tends to appear at transitions, when one way of living has ended and the next has not yet shown its shape: a new job, a new relationship or the end of one, a child leaving, a belief outgrown.
The feeling of the dream tells which side of the change is in focus. Dreams of eager unpacking tend to accompany changes that are wanted. Dreams of endless packing, of losing things in transit, or of arriving at the wrong address tend to accompany changes that are happening faster than they can be absorbed. And dreams of moving back, into an old house, often carry the question of what was formed early and whether it still serves.
A question to sit with
If you could take only what fits in one box into the next part of your life, what would you pack, and what would you leave on the curb?
A dream book can tell you that the Golden Wheel thought moving meant poverty and that Zhou Gong thought a new house was lucky. It can't tell you why your moving dreams always return to the flat you shared at twenty-five. That shows only when your dreams are recorded and kept together. Dreamlock, on the App Store for iPhone, is a private dream journal made for keeping them together: it listens to your dream, paints it, and notices when the same houses come back. For a calm look at whether old dream meanings hold any truth, see do dreams predict the future?