Shipping a house worth of belongings internationally

It doesn’t take years.

I’m currently doing this now. It will take approximately another month for our belongings to arrive in our new home, so two months in total.

How much is cost will depend on the weight. Ours is insured through my husband’s company, but you can look to get additional coverage. Make sure your furniture is wiped down (no cobwebs), and that you’re not trying to bring something made of a wood that isn’t permitted into the country. Anything you’re taking that could be classed as outside furniture/agricultural is throughly cleaned (no grass seeds stuck on patio furniture, for example).

Definitely get the shipping company to look and take a quote. But be wary.

On the day they packed up our stuff they stopped at one point and said container was full, and that was it. Major panic cos there was still 2 sofas, some flat pack boxes, 4 bikes, scooters etc. To pack!!!! Absolute nightmare. We managed to negotiate space for the flat pack and 2 bikes and 2 scooters but had to leave the rest of the stuff. Which was awful dealing with the day before flying! (Some friends came in the evening to help us otherwise we d have been truly fucked)

DH laughs at me still decluttering but after that experience I really only want to keep what we need and love.

I moved UK to US with 7 suitcases and bought everything there

When we moved back we got a container and shipped lots of furniture back - never again. Get yourself on the Two Fat Expats facebook group, you will get some great advice on there

We moved from France to a French Caribbean island. The container took 6 weeks. DH had already moved into a temporary furnished accommodation and we first visited family, then joined him in the rental for 3 weeks until our container arrived.

We massively decluttered beforehand. But also bought extra flat pack (non made up) furniture to take as we knew there was nothing cheap on the island.

We kept minimal clothes etc. Irreplaceable sentimental items either stayed with MIL (as our move is temporary), or came in our plane luggage. All my jewellery travelled in my hand luggage.

Our move is a temporary one. We chose to take all our old furniture. But when we make the move again next year we will leave a lot of stuff here and buy new.

We had one full container which DHs company paid for.

With such young kids I would HIGHLY simplify and minimize their toys and belongings. Mine were older so were very attached to an unfortunate number of things. Since moving here I've continued decluttering so our next move will be simpler.

Done many times, though not paid for it very often myself except when I was very young and not taking much. Back then it was cheaper to take excess luggage on the plane, and to box up other essentials and ship via parcel2go or whatever they are called these days. I've recently shipped nearly 80kg UK to EU for £100 including import taxes.

I am going to disagree slightly with some other posters. It is nice to have your own things around you in an unfamiliar environment. And some things are very expensive or uncommon in your new location so you prefer to take them. For example beds can be very hard in some places. Electrical appliances are often not worth taking though as new location might use different plugs/electricity supply.

I've found that shipping doesn't usually take very long at all nowadays. Sometimes I've received things within a week, and a family member who did EU to East Coast US late last year received all their stuff including their car within 3 weeks and they took an entire household of stuff. That can be faster and cheaper than trying to source the same items in an unfamiliar environment.

Friends did this a few months ago to Canada. It took just over 2 months. So they lived out of 2 suitcases each until then and just bought essentials. You need a shipping company who come and assess what you’d need size wise for your container . Make sure it’s properly insured !!

My DS lived in US for 2 years.
Shipping took about 28 days.
Insurance cover is included in the cost.
The only thing, he had one new piece of furniture, and plastic packaging covers had to be removed, else it counted as an import.
Similar time frame on his return.

I think you would be crazy to take pots and pans and day-to-day stuff. That kind of stuff can be bought so cheaply now. I would definitely take as little as you can and build up new stuff slowly. It feels quite liberating! Obviously take the personal stuff and sentimental items. But then let most of it go.

Someone mentioned not taking out insurance, not sure I'd recommend that. I specialised in marine transit insurance, claims on damage to goods in containers kept me very busy!!

Canada is quite big. Is it near the East coast or West or in the middle?

When we moved to France in 2021 I got the house contents down to 25 cubic metres and got rid of everything else. I sold some furniture to the new tenants of our house including a bed and the huge oak dining room table and a huge wardrobe. Which cut down my cubic meterage alot.

For electrical items we have already replaced most of them now as well.

Would this help OP? https://nomadicfire.com/moving-abroad-checklist

We did this four times! We didn't take insurance out (Australia to UK and return twice) as what's the chance your container will end up at the bottom of the ocean? Only had a bit of damage to some books as the young chaps who did the packing put them in a round box so the edges where bent🤔 I've heard stories of stuff going missing ie. small items like CD's and jewellery, so watch out for that.

we have done Austria to China and then China to UK - usually about 2 months depending on customs clearance. We didn’t pay for it ourselves so cannot advise on cost and one of moves was during covid so probably more expensive due to s shortage of containers.
Do also take into account damage. The shippers advised us that most containers leak and we had items damaged each time we moved. Claiming on the insurance was fine but I wouldn’t ship anything that couldn’t be replaced.

When I moved to the US we opted to take the money and start over, as we didn't know where we'd be living and whether our furniture would even fit the new place.

To clear the house we gave a bunch of stuff away to friends and family, loads of things went on FB marketplace, we hired a skip to clear out a lot of stuff too. I also looked at house clearance companies, but in the end managed it ourselves.

Where in Canada are you moving to? Feel free to PM me

I've done this a number of times and it is a pain. A lot does depend on where you're moving to, distance and access to ports etc.
For a full house of furniture etc you'd be looking at a container .... smaller quantities though are possible.
Things to think about.... do you really need to ship everything? You may find the accommodation in the city you're moving to is generally furnished...check out expat groups/ estate agent ads. If not, there may be an IKEA or similar.
Shipping can take a month plus....so my advice would be to pay for an extra suitcase or 2 on the flight for 'essentials' just in case (in one move my shipping ended up in Tokyo...I was in the Middle East).
Definitely go for a company with a good reputation and who'll provide packing as well.
We had to get quotes from 3 different companies which is a useful tip as prices can vary a fair bit.

We did this 10 years ago. We used. Crown relocations who were excellent. They come to your house and take an inventory of each room and base their cost on that. They then packed up our (5 bed, fully furnished) house, shipped it and then moved it all into our new house overseas. It all went very smoothly.
ETA: our kids were the same age. We only had to worry about bringing the essentials in our luggage. We bough blow up mattresses as temporary beds and camped in one of the main bedrooms together for a few weeks until our things arrived. It was a big adventure and the kids loved it. My advice is to make the first few weeks as fun as possible for the kids so they feel settled and happy in their new location as soon as possible (trips to the zoo, water parks, ice cream cafes etc).

Very much agree. Have moved across the world several times for work. In each case work paid, and we were allowed to fill a standard shipping container ( with restrictions based on destination country).

Third time of moving, from Middle East to USA, we took the cash option. We paid for excess luggage with some sentimental things, including photos and mementos of our stay, hand carried jewellery etc.

So much easier.

If you are paying for it yourselves, I would recommend you get a removals company or freight forwarder to give you ££ and time estimates, then make an informed decision from that.

Do consider the costs of replacement furniture at your destination. In our case, there was always an Ikea or Pier equivalent, so we didn’t struggle.

We move from London to Montreal. Some items were sent by air and others shipped. Also took the dog and cat - they were expensive and lots of paperwork (recommend using a specialist company).

I used to work in shipping, it doesn’t take years 😂 contact schepens international, white & co as a starting point. They know what they’re doing and will sort all customs out too. If I knew where you wanted stuff moving from / too I could give you an idea of transit time

This will start to give you an idea of costs https://www.pssremovals.com/shipping-to-canada

I watch Elle swift on YouTube and she just got a shipping container of furniture moved from uk to USA for £7k think she said. Took 3 months.

Measure how much it would cost to ship against buying them again.