to ask you to tell you're nightmare moving in stories

[twilightstruggle]

We're just in the process of moving out of our first home. Lovely new couple and their little baby moving in.

Basically, when we leave the house, what do we have to do by law, what's good etiquette and what's a nice considerate surprise (we're thinking of leaving them a bottle of champers to celebrate). They seemed really nice and we don't want to annoy them, but we're a bit ditzy and inadvertently inconsiderate sometimes and don't want to read about ourselves on aibu next week!

To make it less dull I thought I'd ask for nightmare moving in stories to help us know what not to do! I appreciate its still kinda dull

Leve it clean, leave the lightbulbs, leave some loo roll.
Keep the garden maintained - we moved in Jan and they hadnt raked the autum leaves so the grass was ruined.

One top tip. If you're moving out and the purchaser pops over to say hi (we once moved two streets down), don't continually stop the movers and say 'oh actually, just bin that' as they carry out the lampshades, curtains and other useful bits and pieces.

Op here. Starting by apologising for the your/you're fail in the title!? Not sure how that happened . Blaming the phone.

Thanks everyone. I'm feeling much more confident after your responses. Sorry to hear about people's dreadful experiences. Appalled at the majority to be honest keep them coming as it makes me feel better!

I think we're doing ok. The stuff is all moved out already, cleaners due to do 'end of tenancy clean' this week, we don't have pets etc - they seem to be the main ones people have mentioned. Chocs instead of champers I'll take the bottle with me instead then - what a shame. The practical advice about useful info to give them and leaving toilet roll very helpful. I will read back through and check the rest again.

What are people's thoughts on gardens that are a touch out of hand? Also, we found a mouse hole under a piece of furniture (old wooden floorboards) that we genuinely didn't know about. We should sort it shouldn't we - sigh.

When we came here for the first time as owners.

It glowed with cleanliness, there was a gorgeous bunch of flowers on the kitchenbench, along with a note with a forwarding address and teltelephone number if we needed help with anything.

All the manuals were also placed there.

I cannot tell you how wonderful that all made us feel.

Lovely.

Dont take the light fittings leaving bare wires.

Do tell that the door frame that is on the wrong side of the wall is hiding a gas pipe. That way your buyers wont try to cut it out to move it, going through the gas pipe in the process and narrowly avoid blowing up the house (british gas engineer was amazed we were all still here).

Do leave the built in wardrobes in the bedroom.

Do empty the loft/shed so that we can use them.

When we bought our first house the guy we bought off packed his clothes and nothing else.

Ii was devastating to turn up keen as mustard with our stuff to discover

...two televisions
Three piece suite
Water bed
Freezer full of food.... We had to throw it, couldn't eat someone else's fish fingers
Bathroom bin with contents (boak)

After the initial disappointment we sold all of his stuff (with his permission) and got on with our lives in our news house ow smelling of bleach. Normally I am a green cleaner but why would you trust the surfaces of a man who didn't empty his bathroom bin. Everything was bleached. And of course we had left the house we moved out of spotless sigh.

Move out. You know, of the house you DONT OWN ANYMORE. Took our vendor 3 days to clear his shit out. We had a 5 week old and were living with inlaws so bit homeless but I think my poor MIL learned some new words that weekend...

*not homeless

Leave everything you said you would on the fixtures and fittings list - we had been going to leave a few extras too like a couple of pairs of curtains, but our buyers pissed us off so much we ended up taking whatever we could.

Box with instruction manuals for white goods/boiler etc

List of location of stop cock/fuse box etc

Redirect your mail, but leave forwarding address

Give everything a quick clean & hoover, though I didn't go mental with this as I would thoroughly clean a house I was moving into anyway. Hoovered carpets, clean kitchen & bathroom and a quick dust round.

Empty bins

A card is a lovely touch

I believe we bought our most recent house from a Mumsnetter.

Telephone call the day before we moved in to ask what time we wanted the heating to come on so that we didn't move into a cold house.

Big bag of labelled spare keys

A folder with receipts, instructions and colour charts showing which rooms were painted which colour if we needed to touch them up.

Bottle of champagne.

All vendors should be like that.

Leave it clean. Don't remove light bulbs. Leave loo roll(s). Make sure you leave everything included in the contract.

I was left with a dangerous gas fire. Fortunately I put it on then unpacked boxes and within minutes began to feel unwell. If I had sat down with a cup of tea or curled up for a rest...

I'm moving shortly and I already know I've been left as its empty

Disgusting sticky carpets
Filthy ( as in slam door in horror) loos
Lots of bottles to recycle
Entire house filthy- grime everywhere I don't think its ever been cleaned
Cobwebs
Random newspapers

When I left sold my last home I left it spotless with flowers and a file of useful numbers, recent local paper, a card and a note about the hedgehog family:)

We we turned up to enter our new home, they were still packing (oldies, had not moved before!!). It was snowing. Luckily there was a pub down the road who accepted us in plus one cat!!! When we eventually got in, half an hour later the lights went. Dad got an electrician in who said he would not touch it as it was a death trap...... Cue dad having to rewire etc etc. and the 'lovely' cooker they left us - billows of smoke would come out of it, causing us all to go around with teary eyes. It was some tine before we got a new one (I suppose the expense of moving house, mum and dad had not thought they would need a new cooker!). A few weeks later they asked if they could have their animals back (stone ones in the garden).

YYY to clean!!!

We've only sold one house. We left all the left over tins of paint, labelled with which room they were from. I know the "new" owner a bit (child at same school), she said that was really handy.

I believe in one house they had taken all the lightbulbs. None in fittings! Ordinary light bulbs back then. We left loads at the last place.

By the way - good idea to leave details of when bin men come and leave any take away/restaurant details and if there is a council or suchlike. We also left some bin bags too. Address of nearet doctor/dentist etc and where nearest hospital/vet is.

throw some bleach down the loo and make sure the house is clean ive exchanged houses before the silly cow was filthy as hell stole my stuff tried to steal more and generally took the piddle

directions to the local takeaway is a good idea too

Do:
Admit the dishwasher doesn't work so it doesn't flood the kitchen first time it's used
Leave the code for the security alarm and don't pretend not to know it when asked via solicitor
Clean the oven!
Sort out the main connection to the gas supply so that you can use said oven and the central heating at the same time

Redirect mail but also leave some written labels for anything that slips through the net, if you would like it forwarded.

Few years ago now, moved into a house after we had viewed, and I swear none of this was apparent...it looked abit cluttered and needed abit of a clean, but meh liked the house.

I sobbed when I went back with the keys

Utter filth, hole in bedroom wall, random items left in kitchen, deep fat fryer which was obviously used alot, the tiles were coverd in build up.

However, these were the worst.

Two axes left out in the back garden, two big machete knife things, above the door in the porch (perhaps the postman was a little threatening).

A disgusting toilet, coverd in dried vomit.

And whilst scrubbing the house with bleach, and I thank god I had heavy duty gloves on, used syringes down the backs of radiators.

This house was located in a very quiet suburban area, but you don't have to be Miss. Marple to know what was going on there.

I changed the locks immediately.

Take some light bulbs with you just in case . . .

to ask you to tell you're nightmare moving in stories

Shudder, shudder !

Our estate agent told us to leave the keys inside the house, as they had the key they had been using for viewings, so they could give that one to our buyer.

They called me 2 hours later when I was 80 miles away to say their key had snapped off in the lock. I don't think our buyer was too happy. Also when we unpacked we found the remote thermostat for our old house's boiler, which our movers had helpfully packed for us. Oops.

I found a baseball bat with 20 nails sticking out of one end in this house...(Don't know how they got the nails in - spikey ends sticking out, couldn't see the heads...)
I had it for years as I wasn't really sure how to get rid of it - it was a weapon - not the kind of thing you can stick in a wheelie bin really...
I was so embarrassed when a handyman came across it doing a job...
And now - I think - I cut the spikey top bit off and banged the nails down - but can't remember actually doing it - maybe I just thought that would be a good way and it is still here somewhere ...

LastTango if you had read the thread you would know that the OP already realised her mistake.

I once spent 8 hours cleaning the flat we left so it gleamed, I also left wine in the fridge. I was knackered but pleased I'd left it nice for next people.

I then get an email complaining that I hadn't cleaned - turned out in my tiredness I had missed one small cupboard by mistake, grrr