How do you pack up and move things when you sell your house?

[PinkPlantCase]

This seems quite silly but I don’t know how to do it. We have 1DC age 18months, will be closer to age 2 I expect by the time we move.

Me and DH both work full time. I have 1 day annual leave left but could probably take a day or two of unpaid leave if it had to. (Leave year doesn’t reset until after the moving date).

We have pets in the garden.

Our house sale and the buying of the next house is moving along nicely but I’ve never had to move out of one house and into another house on the same day before.

How far ahead do you start packing? Should we hire a storage unit for a month or two to take some pressure off moving on one day?

I don’t think we can afford to pay people to move and pack us, I have family with vans so we’ve always used them in the past if we need to love big furniture.

I’ve heard that house sales often don’t go through until the afternoon, this seems even worse!

Just looking for other people’s experiences. Do you do all the packing in evenings and weekends?

And yes I think AIBU for not knowing how to do this.

Evening and weekends tbh. I moved house a month ago and started packing about a week or so beforehand but it depends how much stuff you have. Packed my 4 bed house myself not using a company but used a removals company to load the lorry on the day. Often happens late in the day but removals will turn up early morning so can be a lot of waiting round. If there’s a clause of being over x amount of hours late the removal company will charge just pay the fee ahead of time rather than incur the hour by hour penalty

Start packing now

Anything you can manage without
If that's one plate , one fork per person you will be fine

Get a skip and throw whatever you can ( sell or recycle if you have the time )

I first started to de clutter! Throw things away and sort through cupboards of doom.
Packed and stored things I wouldn't need books, etc

Packed suitcases for each person with clothes toys and toiletries etc the day before the move.

Then I hired a local company to pack our house and move us. Worth every penny!

They put all the beds and cots up wardrobes and furniture in the new house! I unpacked essential items which I'd clearly marked, that day.
And the rest was slowly unpacked over time.

Write on every box a list of what is in there!

Before you dismiss removal companies, get some quotes especially for the packing service and see if you can manage it. Because honestly the best money you spend while moving would be for a packing service. They are a dream. They will get your whole house packed up for you the day before you move at lightening speed.

If you really can't afford it, start packing up non essential stuff early and do it a bit at a time. Remember it takes far longer to move on the day than you think, and you need to be out of the house the minute completion happens. So get those family members with vans there early and load em up.

Normally you complete on a frifay, usually around midday, you have to then be out of your house, packed and ready to go, you go to estate agenta to pick up new house keys then you go to new house and unpack.

I usually then take the next week off work to have time to decorate/unpack properly etc

It's a great opportunity for a clear out. Do one room at a time, pack in boxes, and label them with rooms for new house (kitchen, front bedroom, lounge etc). Stack boxes if you can in one area and just leave out what you need until the day before the move. I've actually left stuff in drawers and taped plastic bags over them carrying drawers from house to van, van to new house.

We packed ourselves (up til 4am on the day) but movers were the best £600 I ever spent. They took our stuff at 8am and magically appeared with it at 3pm when we had the new keys.

You can’t do it yourself with small children and no annual leave, it will be so stressful. You really do need removals. I have done it both ways but with children it is too difficult.
You will be under a lot of time pressure on the day to get out and clean. It’s a slog even with removals. Do you really have access to big enough vans to fit your whole house in one go? You won’t be able to go back and forth as you will be in a chain.

In terms of packing, start now. Pack absolutely as much as possible in advance. We end up with one plate, glass, mug etc each in the last week.

Don’t underestimate how long garages and sheds take to pack. It can be days. Plus tip runs, you’ll do loads. It’s a huge job.

We have moved 5 times in 7 years and it still catches us out.

Get a quote from your removal company to pack for you, believe me it is worth every penny and will be tiny in the scheme of overall moving costs!

We've moved three times in the last ten years and after the first horrendous time, used packers. They come in first thing in the morning and are so effective and efficient you wouldn't believe how quickly they can do it. They have all the right packaging stuff and know exactly how to do it most efficiently, load it on the lorry and off they go. Even if money is tight I would not do it myself ever, ever again!

I had forgotten that we can’t have any back and fourth with vans! Augh.

Sounds like I should atleast get some quotes for removals.

I had also forgotten about the cleaning 🙈

Thankyou so much for your responses! Very very helpful.

Yes evenings and weekends. Last time we moved we started decluttering the garden sheds, loft, cupboard under the stairs as soon as we got a buyer. So we were only faced with packing things we planned to keep.

We used a removals company but did our own packing. It cost us about £1000 to move from a 3 bed house - absolutely worth it if you can find the money. Previous times though we also used family with vans.

Do a shout out on your local facebook page for packing boxes, there are always people wanting to get rid of them after their own move. We started a good month before the targeted move date. There's loads of stuff you don't use day to day that can be packed up in advance. Put filled boxes back in the loft or garage or spare room so they're ready to load up on moving day. Make sure they're well-labelled in case you have to go back and find something after you've packed it.

Basically you need to have everything 99% done the night before, so you only have to remove the furniture and boxes in the morning and do a final clean. We moved my dad just before Christmas and the sale had gone through by 12pm.

And try to make sure you don't complete on a Friday. If there are any issues with the move the solicitors won't be hanging around past 5pm on a Friday night.

As soon as your house is sold start packing.

Throw out anything that you wouldn't take with you. 3 piles for:
Donate to charity
Dump (get a skip or do multiple dump runs)
Sell (I sold loads of stuff on eBay)

Packing boxes clearly marked with contents and which room the box is to go to (bedroom, kitchen, lounge, etc.)

PACKING TAKES AGES. Do not under-estimate how big the job will be.

You can get packing boxes from the removal company, including wardrobe boxes which you just transfer all your hangers (with clothes) into.

DEFINITELY use a removal company if you can. (So many horror stories on the property threads about people turning up expecting to move into their new place and finding the previous owners still trying to pack up and move.)

We were due to pick up the keys for a bungalow my Pil were buying. The family totally underestimated how long it would take to move stuff to their new house.

Eventually gave us the keys at 11.30pm & the house was in a complete state. Cleaning takes more time than expected.

Having moved ourselves a lot, start packing ASAP, declutter, declutter, declutter. We've used storage but it's expensive. Help must be rock solid. We've never had help but have had to get an extra van or give stuff away.

Movers are great, a packing service is amazing! Don't pack & get in their way, like my Pil did...

I agree with getting packing and moving quotes, they are life-changing! But otherwise (and actually as well as...)

Declutter like mad. Do one room per weekend and sell, donate and skip everything you can.

Then once your rooms are as clutter-free as possible, pre-pack one room per weekend. A storage unit isn't a terrible idea but equally you can use a bedroom or other space in your house if money is tight to store boxes - it's just a case of getting boxes and putting things like books, non-seasonal clothes, ornaments/stuff you look at rather than use in the boxes. LABEL EVERYTHING.

A couple of weeks ahead of time pack up stuff like bedding, towels, clothes, just leaving yourself enough clean stuff to get through the fortnight. This is also a good time to go through the kitchen and pack excess crockery, cutlery, etc.

Deep clean oven/fridge/freezer so you only need to give a wipe over, or hire cleaners for moving date.

Two days before switch to takeaways and pack practically everything you can. You should literally be left with boxes, two sets of clothes, a couple of empty boxes for dirty clothes/bedding/essentials that you fill as you go.

If you can get someone to take your pets, do that the evening before. Ditto any kids. Then it's just a case of getting up early, packing the last few bits, getting the van loaded. (This is where a removal van is handy bc they'll send one big van that will fit everything).

Clean.

Sit about your empty house waiting for a call from solicitors to say that funds have been transferred BOTH WAYS.

Drive to solicitors, hand in keys. Drive to sellers' solicitors, pick up keys. This usually around lunchtime. Move.

Having the removal company pack for us worked like a dream. They did it on the Thursday before we moved on the Friday, and came to pick up the beds on Friday morning.

The one downside of having had someone else pack, is that your new house is then full of exciting looking boxes, but when you open them, you quickly realise that it's just your own crap!

Pay a good removal company to do it. It's not cheap, but worth every penny imo.

I was lucky enough to be on a relocation package for my last 2 moves, so the costs were covered by that, but it's fantastic. They wrapped all my china etc, packed everything beautifully, labelled the boxes with which room they came from and put them in the equivalent room in the new place. They have fantastic sturdy boxes with hanging rails in them, all you have to do is move clothes from the boxes to the wardrobes. They emptied out the shed and everything.

They even connected up the washing machine for me in the new place, and in one room hung my new curtains because the windows were very tall and I couldn't reach, even from the stepladder.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

I have never taken time off to move, just pack on weekends and evenings. We have however always stayed with family or in a hotel the night before the move so that we can leave the house completely packed up the night before. Everything will then be in one room near the front door and the rest of the house can be cleaned at the same time as the movers move everything into the their truck, once they are gone it's just one room left to clean. I then put the cleaning stuff in my car and drive it over to the new place. This have worked well so far.

I started packing as soon as we sold - mainly in the evenings after work. Everything except the furniture was boxed up ready for completion day. We moved ourselves by hiring a box van but we did need help from DH friends to load and unload the heavy stuff. If you hire a removals service, some will pack for you. A storage unit is a good idea if you can afford it cos moving day is very stressful. You could put the stuff you don't need in there to sort at a later date I guess. You usually aim for 12pm to complete on the day and need to be out by then. When we arrived at our new house, the old owners had not started moving out at all which was a bloody nightmare!!

Yes we did this too. I didn't empty any drawers at all

I have moved quite a bit even when my DS was small.

Start decluttering now. Either bin or give away. Facebook market place or your subdivisions local site will be good for this. Try to only take what you need, want and love.

Start packing the non-essentials now. It always takes more time than you think. Even a box or two a night will add up.

I've always done my own packing but hired movers to move me. Pack everything except the bare necessities like a plate and silverwear each, a mug each, a water glass each, a couple of towels etc.

I put together an essentials box so the kettle, mugs, coffee, tea, biscuits, a bottle of wine, the pets' dishes and some food. Just enough to get you through a couple of days.

I also pack a suitcase with bed linen for each bed, towels, a couple of outfits for everyone, toiletries and anything extra (like a teddy bear).

I pack all the important documents in my work bag. These three things go into my car and come with me. The suitcase can be packed and go into the car early on.

Hiring movers is so fab! They have a big enough truck and completely empty the house. Our last move we were out in an hour and they take apart and put together the dining table and beds.

They trot off with the stuff and we then usually get some lunch whilst we wait for the keys to the new place. Then the movers move us in.

I then always make the beds up as soon as possible. This means that you can then have a takeaway and maybe some wine and just go to bed!

Pay for removals and packing. We put a lot of stuff in storage before our old house went on the market (to make the house look better in photos), but it meant there was less in the house to pack so the packing service cost less. Worth every penny.

If you are moving out of anything bigger than a 1 bed flat then you either need lots of helpers and childcare/pet sitting or you need a proper company.
I would definitely do everything I could to pay for movers if I was in your scenario.

Definitely get quotes from a removals company. We moved last year and the packing service was £400 extra, although I know that was reasonable. It was the best money I’ve ever spent, I just packed an overnight bag and they did absolutely everything. I’m was on my own with children and pets and it saved my sanity.

We saved up and paid for packers. I would never go back. It was so worthwhile.

We started packing about a month before and just had a suitcase per person that we lived out of. We did it all on evenings and weekends and did a massive declutter at the same time.
In hindsight we should have started earlier because it was still a massive rush to get everything packed up.
We hired a van that you drive yourself as they charge per day so no extra charge for taking several hours to move. On the day of the move we had family to look after the kids which made it easier