Ten days until move, how packed should I be?

[Yoperreosolo]

I feel the answer is ‘more packed than this’

Have you actually exchanged contracts yet?

If not, then I would be organised rather than packed e.g. have boxes ready, know what is going in each box, then perhaps start boxing up some things you don't massive need e.g. some kitchen stuff or ornamental stuff.

The rest can just be a mad packing spree once you have actually exchanged, as anything can happen up to that point.

By next weekend everything but the absolute essentials that will move with you in the car

kitchen is the worst so pack one box there then fill a bin bag with clothes or cushions and do another bit of kitchen

don’t buy any food if you can make a concoction with the tins and jars in the cupboard

At that point we were down to air beds everything dismantled packed and ready to go apart from things we needed during those 10 days.

I packed everything in 2.5 days (boxes were delivered 5 days before but I was working). Whilst supervising half term kids. DH was working so did much less but he did do most of the kitchen at least.

4 bed house plus garage plus shed. It felt never-ending but was do-able.

Contrary to the above, at 10 days pre move (and I’ve moved a fair few times!) I wouldn’t have packed anything. I’d have decluttered and organised, made sure there was nothing left in the house/loft/garage/garden that wasn’t coming with us, but no actual packing.

I started early but I was soo keen to move! Think I had mine essentials packed about a month in advance - we exchanged and completed on the same day in the end is no way could it wait for exchange and I was working with not much leave to take so -

Unless your home is disorganised 10 days is ample. Pack two rooms each evening.

Plenty of time. I’d focus on decluttering if you can for a day or two. Then take it room by room. BUT I’ve had to move quickly before and even if “packing” involves shoving everything and the clutter into bin bags and sorting it all out at the other end it can be done.

I wouldn't have much at all packed, but would have had a good clear out and a bit of a plan.
10 days on an air bed seems absolutely nuts to me but each to their own

I think it mostly depends on how much stuff you have and how much time you have in the 3 days leading up to the move. 10 days out I'd concentrate of decluttering, throwing stuff out and taking things to charity shops.

I'm two days out from moving and have shit everywhere. My advice is do it earlier, you are unlikely to regret being organised but you will 100% regret a stressful mad panic!

And how long you have to move too. I'm moving into 5 weeks and am desperate to start packing! But, there's no point, I also have a few days so if I run out of boxes I can unpack in my new place and use them again

Nearly 14 years ago but as I recall we exchanged and had two weeks then to completion. Can't recall when we got the boxes but I started packing as soon as we did. Was working 3 full days a week then. Spent all my spare time packing (100 boxes - placing them in the house was a mission in itself) and gave up on trying to sort / get rid as it took too long (of course, I should have done it before exchange but it was so uncertain whether we'd ever get there). Three bedroom, two bathroom house with loft extension containing a crowded office. Had been there 18 years and had two kids in primary.

Depends on how much you have. We're kind of benign hoarders - not obsessive but have / had a lot of stuff.

We were packing a two bed house which we had ruthlessly decluttered before putting house on the market. We hired a van from the Saturday morning and moved on a Monday, so had the weekend to pack the van. However, we probably started three weeks before just packing boxes and we had loads of them in our living room. The worst part was the contents of the garden shed as we hadn't and couldn't box much of it up and loaded it on to the van as is.

We have a friend who used to pack up and do house moves professionally and he said absolutely everything should just be picked up and packed unsorted, just label it enough to give a rough idea of contents.

Next time we will downsize so we will have to be much more organised.

Weirdly it took a lot longer than I thought it would, we also had no kids and one cat. I actually enjoyed the packing up much more than any other part of the process.

OMG sympathies, I can well remember the packing stress from my move and that was nearly two years ago! I'd say at this stage books, ornaments, and most other non essentials should be packed. But it always takes longer than you think!

I mean the children had those stupidly over built cabin type beds. The ones that seem to take a year to build or take apart. We did not want to be leaving those till the last minute so dragged out the camping gear. Like an adventure as the house boxed and emptied.

Hahahahaha! Do you realise how long it takes to pack a room? 😭 When was the last time you moved?!

You have plenty of time according to the family we bought our house off - she had just started packing her kitchen up when we arrived with our van. Nightmare. Two hours later our removal firm were going to start charging us so we had to chuck her out (of our house!). She left stuff in the garage, stuff on the neighbours drive, chucked her cat in her car (no carrier, literally just the cat) and drove off.

Depends how much stuff you’ve got in your room and how organised it is, surely? Bar my large kitchen diner (and maybe my tween’s bedroom) I don’t have a room that couldn’t be packed in 1-2 hours.
I’ve moved 8 times in the past 12 years.

I started decluttering about six months in advance and doing tip runs. Moving day itself was still stressful

one thing that really helped though was dropping the keys to the EA days before and then on moving day we just locked the house up and put our remaining keys through the letterbox. Simple things like that saved us a lot of time like driving in to the city centre just to drop the keys off as well as moving out that day. We were also lucky with the owner of our new house having her garage totally empty and letting us take loads of boxes and bikes over in advance!

Have some friends and family on standby if poss to help get stuff out of the house, we called in a lot of favors. Getting fourteen years of belongings out of a house is hard work