what stuff did you take that was useless/ chucked out

[giggly]

We are clearing the house out for moving to Perth in a few months. We have put some stuff into storage to make the house less cluttered for selling. The idea is when the house is sold to ship out or charity whats left. But just realised how much lovely sentimental antiques crap we have and dont know if I should just send pretty much everthing within reason and get rid of it when we are there if it is not needed.

Part of me thinks that the more familiar our home is the dc will be more settled. Not talking about huge amount of extra shipping costs.

This from the women who once moved 2 bin bags with rotting rubbish into new home by accident.

Hi giggly! I've moved about a fair bit, and think it depends on how long you're staying in Perth. If it's not permanent, I really would take as little as possible. If it is, then I would take as much sentimental stuff as possible. It's amazing how homesick you get after a few months, and it really helps to have your familiar stuff to cry onto

Oh, and the DCs will be fine, it'll be you who needs the sentimental stuff

Depending on how long you are going, I think it is a mistake to store things. Fashions and tastes change while you are away.
OTOH, we have stuff in boxes which moved from Bangkok to Switzerland and now to Belgium and they still haven't been opened. Five years they have been carted around.

I have been overseas twice, the first time I left practically everything in storage and only brought clothes and other essentals - and failed to settle properly for the entire 18-24 months. The second time I went through all my stuff and shipped everything - and settled down very well with all my stuff in a new house. It also had the advantage that the new stuff we did buy along the way, went very well with my existing stuff and I didn't have to buy 'extras'.

So no one took any rotting rubbish then . the stuff in storage is things we will be bringing with us, books, bookcases pictures thing like that. Going on a PR visa so planning to stay for ever.

I recently moved to NZ and took everything! I took about 3 months before hand gradually going through all drawers and cupboards sorting out all the stuff that never got used and took that to charity shops.

DS (aged 6) settled a lot more once all our stuff and his toys arrived. it really helped to be able to arrange his bedroom exactly that same as it had been in the UK. Oh and I liked using my own saucepans, mugs, books etc. it was more exciting than I expected. One thing I ishe I had brought was a few old towels, for cleaning and mopping up. I only brought the good stuff

I really would take everything giggly (except electrical things like washer/dryer/hair driers). Stuff is expensive on this side of the world, especially furniture and books. And you'll really pine for that old table cloth when you get here

I took a full nappy bin...does that top yours? Not on purpose of course.

Some people take everything and some hardly anything. We brought everything. I thought that we would feel more settled. Also, everything costs a fortune over here. Even Ikea is twice the price. I brought all of my electrical goods as well, but my friend sold hers on e-bay and bought new ones when she got here.

We brought nearly everything, but we spent from when we bought our house to when we moved out here (5 years) planning it, so didn't buy anything in that time that we didn't think we'd need IYKWIM?
If you are bringing/paying for a container anyway, whats the difference between chucking it out here rather than there!?!
We moved into our apartment 7 weeks before our shipping arrived and I couldn't settle, then as soon as it arrived it felt like home!
We do have 3 boxes of crap sentimental things in the garage though!

Thanks again.
I was going to leave some big but in good condition bookcases thinking that I could get new ones in IKEA, but I guess that makes no sense. I,m guessing its fairly cheap to get my plugs changed so will bring most things.

I actually use my old nappy bin as the toy collecter from all the rooms to go back to dc rooms, so maybe will bring that as well.

Hi giggly.. glad to see its packing ahoy!
I brought every last bit of crap from dd's room and i still think that was worth it .. even tho new ones were played with more it just seemed to help her settle in when it all arrrived and she got to invite her new friend over to help her unpack and show off all her stuff.. yes mst of it is now land fill or been handed on down but still i dont regret that!
We had a container to our selves... as we have a friend who works in haulage and he lined it up for us on the cheap so we brought almost everything but nothing electrical as there would be no warrenty etc and we decided to splash out on new stuff here..In hindsite if i was ever insane enough to do it again.. id only take the kids rooms and our stuff... and send a box of photos pictures etc.. that would have done just fine!
watch out for customs on the way in they are very tight and charge you a fortune if you ahve packed something to be incinerated on arrival.. crimbo decorations... leave out the soding pine cones! ( they are $100 each to set fire too!)

We brought very little in the way of furniture and equipment and had great fun buying it here, but when we arrived four years ago the we got $2.5 to the pound, nowadays it's more like $1.5 which has made setting up home much more expensive for people moving. Houses tend to be bigger here so you can end up with what looks like toy furniture in your rooms - it will still do for a while though and it's better to have a small table to eat at than nothing! We brought a lot of the kids' stuff to help them feel at home (and every single thing from DS2's room down to the last plastic soldier because he didn't want to move but that's another story). If there isn't much difference in shipping costs I would bring as much as you can (but make sure you know what can cause grief at customs or you can end up paying a lot to have things fumigated or destroyed - no cane furniture for instance). Good luck with the move.

Thanks again. We have a family member who is MD of removal firm so he is doing us a good deal. They are packing everything as that makes it easier for customs or so I am told.

Apparently my container will be x rayed in Scotland and Fremantle get to see its contents before it leaves the UK. I asked if this was for pine cones, wicker baskets etc only to be told its for sentex and the likes

I am now best friends with the women at the charity shop.

Oxfam loved us before we left the UK! We gave so much stuff away and still ended up with 100 boxes in the garage that haven't really been opened in the four months since they arrived. It wasn't really worth us spending too long sorting out things. We'd already worked out we needed a container for the furniture, and we only ended up filling 3/4 of it but it was cheaper to do it that way than to pay for everything separately by weight.

I think the boys (9, 6 and 2) have been very pleased to have all their toys and it would have been extremely expensive for us to have furnished the apartment from scratch so it's good to have all our furniture too. I recently dug out a whole load of old photos and although I haven't knocked any hooks into our walls it's really good to have them displayed on the work surfaces/shelves etc.

Quarantine opened a fair number of our boxes so you do need to be pretty careful. It probably didn't help that the packers had labelled about ten of the boxes 'bike parts' ,even though they weren't! (We sold our bikes, sob...) We ended up having to pay about $300 for some boots to be cleaned but they would have cost more to buy new so I didn't really mind.

In terms of stuff it wasn't worth bringing, I can't think of much. We seem to have brought a few UK maps and A-Z books that aren't really very useful over here! We have some artwork and rugs from when the 'house doctor' person did our house prior to renting. They are not to my taste but someone might like them so I'll probably sell them on ebay when I get round to it. My digital radio doesn't work over here and neither does the set-top box. But it's not as if they took up loads of space, and we wouldn't have been able to sell them for much in the UK anyway so I think it was worth bringing them just in case they had worked.

I've moved rubbish too and a wet towel in a swimming bag . We also moved 30 boxes of books which stayed in their boxes due to lack of space / shelving. Am now looking at boxes full of pictures that we can't put up on the walls unless we redecorate at the end of our tenancy (what do other people do with picture / wall decorations??)

I thought we had made a good attempt of decluttering but rather ran out of energy for it towards the end so will have to do some more while unpacking. It has been nice to make the house look like home though and I think you can't suddenly change your personality and live like a minimalist if you really are a hoarder!!

Thanks Misty glad to know its not only I who moves rubbish

I find myself looking for things that we have put in storage except that it takes me about 4 hours to remember having looked in every nook and crany

you may take electrical equipment as long as the current(voltage) is compatible with the one in australia. It's very easy to replace the sockets, must english sockets can be unscrewed, or you can cut the socket out (there are some special clamps), or replace the entire cable depending on your equipment.

DVDs in Australia are region 4 afaik, so unless you bring your own UK DVD player or computer, they would be useless over there.

Chuck out all the books you have read (unless a sentimental value) and keep the recipe books. :)

also, DAB radios are a bit tricky, It took me a while to find out you can reset it so you can delete the UK stations from the memory. Radio operated clocks might not work properly either, we are in Switzerland and my clock is an hour behind.

Thanks Tortilla, I will have a look at my DAB radio to see if I can reset the stations.

Tortilla, we bought a multi region dvd player over here - problem solved!

oooh, reading with interest. Giggly we are off to Perth too.

What's the deal with wicker? Have read so many horror stories about it that I am planning to leave a wicker chair here.

We are bringing most things unless it's noticeably a hunk of junk. Purging books (but we have crazy quantities) and clothes. We looooove multiregion DVD player and it's coming. Plan to get a new washing machine as I know a lot of the Aussie ones are bigger capacity.

I have an internet radio so I can listen to Radio 4 and nerd out while cooking.

No no no - do not under any circumstances purge books.

You have no idea how expensive they are over here!!

We are talking about $25 for a standard paperback. They are like gold dust as the aussie equivalent of the net book agreement is still in place.

I put boxes and boxes of books into storage in the UK (we're only over here for a couple of years) and so wish I had shipped them over. (sob).

Please be aware of how expensive things are in Australia. I was astounded. We had hoped to save some money while out here, but it's not going to happen. If you'd like a quick illustration take a look at the iTunes Australia site - the current Adele album is 7.99 in UK, $21.99 here.

Our new washing machine (which is nice and everything but not noticeably larger than our old uk one) was $799 and that was one of the cheapest I could find.

MrsDistinctly that's interesting about the washing machine, I will do more research. You have NO IDEA how many books we are talking about :) so the rule is if we love it and will re-read it it gets to stay. Otherwise it goes. I have a KIndle that I plan to keep linked to a UK account so that will help a bit with new book costs. When we were in oz before we used to go to some excellent secondhand bookshops.

I know what you mean about the cost of things - this is an argument I had with my DH for many years, even when the exchange rate was more in favour of the pound. The cost of cosmetics is eyewatering so I will bring extras of a lot of items. But when you are there permanently and being paid in Aussie dollars I think that it is easier to let go. I say that as a Canadian who arrived in the UK when the exchange was £3/dollar and my scholarship money evaporated in a little pile. :)

We took all our electrical stuff, easy to convert with an adapter and our TV. We just brought a cheap set top box here for free-to-air TV. Just make sure you buy a power board in the UK to then use in Australia. My 10 pound toaster from Tesco was alot better than the $75 toaster I got here. Before I left I went to John Lewis and bought up half the shop, everything is very expensive in Australia. I took my hairdryer, GHD kids clocks, digital radios....hoover etc all work here and worth the $5.00 for an adapter than you can use for many things.

I washed all our wellington boots in the sink and even washed the bikes and tent pegs. We hoovered the tent and washed by hand the trampoline poles and legs. Worth it all in the end when we did not have to pay any additional customs fees for cleaning.

I took the kids wicker baskets and wicker baskets that were magazine holders etc, just didnt take any wicker stuff that had been outdoors. I washed and cleaned out outdoor table and everything was fine.

Do not underestimate how expensive Australia has become.

I love it here and my children are having a lovely time but I do miss the Uk shopping. BTW Marks and Spencer, Next, Boden, Debenhams all deliver to Australia and I find it sometimes cheaper and faster to have items shipped to Australia rather than buy locally.

Good Luck with your move and enjoy the wonderful weather that Perth will give you. It will take time to adjust once the "newness" has worn off but take one day at a time and you will enjoy it.

As long as you are getting the inflated rate of pay too !

I only brought about 80 books with me, including the children's. I wish I'd brought far more with me.

I'm heading back to the Uk for a couple of weeks on Monday and am bringing back lots of stuff (including gravy granules. DC refuse to consume Aussie gravy) and cosmetics and clothes.

Basically am taking empty suitcases!