Moving House Old Style

Patchwork_Quilt

Another tip for moving day is to have a large home-made cake in your box with the milk, tea and sugar. A fruit cake and a piece of cheese is a meal in itself and might stop you going for fish and chips

Also, check the insurance details of your removal company, if you decide to have one. Ours was a budget company who claimed they were fully insured, but admitted later that they were not. Luckily, the house insurance covered us.

daska

Having moved a full four bed house including 2 teens and baby 3 times in the last 18 months...

number the rooms of your current and destination addresses, print off sheets of numbered labels, place labels in correct rooms, apply labels to all furniture and boxes before they leave the rooms! print off a door label for each destination room and attach to door of room with masking tape. no excuses for boxes/furniture ending up in the wrong rooms and much quicker than writing the destination on each box. you can also do sheets of labels for other things in large quantities - in our case several thousand books had to be identified for easy access for DH's PhD thesis: roman, greek etc.

towels/bedlinen etc. make up a bag for each room with the basics that you'll need for the first few days then use the rest of the towels/bedlinen to pack your crockers/pictures.

baby? disposable nappies (unused!) are great for packing ornaments, why pay for bubble wrap when you can buy something 'reusable'.

but first things first: throw, donate or sell anything you haven't used for a year, not only is it less to pack but it's less to unpack :-)

daisy_steiner_2

Sorry I've come back to this after a few days. My internet is playing up.
Thanks for all of this useful information.
I shall be going to town on decluttering this weekend. Thanks very much.

x

nikki_angel

....please!

I don't even know if I am posting in the right area so please move if there is a more appropriate board for this.

I posted here as I am thinking about the cleaning side of things. i.e making sure that everything is perfect for the landlord so I don't lose a penny of the deposit for cleaning reasons. I do follow Flylady when I can but I s'pose I am after a comprehensive list of MUST DOs for the entire house.

If there has already been a thread for this, please point me in the right direction if you can

Also, any tips in general for making this as pain free as possible. When moving in the past, I have just sort of ambled along and made do with boxes filled with stuff from each room but now I have a baby to worry about I need it to be as pain free as poss!

THANKS!!

Little_Vics

The best tip I can give is to pack 1 box with overnight essentials - kettle, tea bags, washbag, bedding, mobile charger - and make sure that it NEVER leaves your sight! On top of this, we packed according to what rooms stuff would go into rather than what rooms stuff came out of, labelled them all up, and then put them in the right rooms when we got the keys. It saved a lot of faffing about.

nikki_angel

Brill, thanks! That's the sort of stuff I need to know! x

Buggins

Apart from the 'essential' box - also remember to make up your bed sooner rather than later. It's a real pain when you're exhausted and have to do it before you can get into it.
My mother moved over 20 times in 30 years (army) and she always made sure this was the priority!!
HTH
Buggins

Skint_Catt

Depending on timescales I've always found that packing 'non-essentials' and out of season items first helps. Basically leave yourself with just the bare minimum of what you need to live for the next few weeks or so and pack EVERYTHING else away (in temp storage or friends/relatives house too if possible).

You'll find you can live without quite a lot of 'stuff' which can then be packed quickly last & emptied first in the new place. Then you have another period of time until you need those non-essentials sorted out.

C xx

Gingernutmeg

In terms of cleaning, remember to do the things that normally get forgotten, as they're the things that they check in order to dock your deposit. Skirting boards, door frames and the extractor fan in the kitchen - they were all checked when we moved out. Thankfully I'd done them, the agent was most surprised that I'd cleaned the extractor fan and replaced the filter (and not a bit disappointed that they couldn't fine me for it ). Dusty lampshades/light fittings is another thing they pick up on, and cobwebs. I also got some brownie points for febreezing the curtains - they weren't washable so I gave them a spritz and it really freshened them up. Obviously check first in an inconspiculous area though

I don't know how practical it is for you but I always find it helpful to clear out rooms and then clean as I go, as I prefer to live in chaos for a while in one room knowing that the others are clean. My rule is, once the door is shut you DO NOT go back in, on pain of death We've always been lucky in that we've always arranged a bit of a crossover in the dates, so we can clean the new place and start moving in before we clean the old place. You generally can't do this when you're buying but if you're renting, it's a big help. I also find it handy to keep all of my cleaning stuff in a box together whilst I'm moving and I do a check a week or so before to see if I need anything, as you need it for both places and it's a pain when you can't find or run out of something.

nikki_angel

I am hoping for a cross over Unfortunately, our flat is open plan living room & kitchen, with the bedroom off of the front room bit with the bathroom off the bedroom so can't actually shut a door on anything so to speak! Being quite a small area it should be easy enough but I just need these pointers i.e filters so as not to get caught out!


Thanks so much