Moving house with baby + toddler: top tips please!

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DD1 will be 2y, DD2 about 4 months. Advice, experience and wisdom welcome

Start packing very early at it takes so much longer to do anything with baby.

get someone to specifically come and look after children on moving day so you are free to do other things.

get hold of the usbourne book about moving house - it's got great illustrations of packing boxes and big removal vans etc.

Keep your little ones out of the house on moving day - go to a friends house if you can.

Thanks! Any more?

pay someone a massive wodge of cash to do it for you it has to be worth it...

One tip and one tip only: get the removal people to do you packing for you. THe best few hundred quid you have ever spent in your life, and I've been there and I know.

Get rid of the children.

NO, the children are not really a problem (though obviously it is nice if, while the packers are packing, you go out for a nice lunch with your dh/dp) - you MUST get the removal firm to do the packing. I CANNOT stress this strongly enough. You MUST do this!

agree with aloha, never done it myself but know many people who say it's the best £1k they ever spent

Oh YES! I had ds in nursery and dd at home (she was six months old)and it was so relaxing! Dh and I pottered off for lunch, came home, got in the way a bit, I took dd to the park, then we went to the new house for a recce, came home, got in the van, and moved in (which meant standing about doing zilch). So easy.

Don't forget to make sure all your kids' stuff including bedding is the first thing to be unpacked. It helps if you put a few familiar toys around so they can feel at home asap.

Also, if there might not be any curtains - be prepared with a dark sheet and some safety pins as a temporary measure!

number the boxes as you pack

number 1 is the first box you pack and so on.

then when you arrive at new place work your way back - unpack the highest numbers first, lower numbered boxes are less urgent.

How anal is that???

second the get them to pack for you. Only cost us an extra £200 (not unpacking though). Worth every penny (even though they were not exactly the best packers, nothing got broken).

Pay removers to pack for you. Get help with children on the day you move and pref the day after - you will need at least one clear day if not two once your are in, so rope in kindly relatives.

When we last moved we had the house for a couple of weeks prior to moving in so we moved a lot of stuff in that time. We then got a removals firm to do the big stuff.
The best thing I did, and it did cost a bit but it was the best NZ$500 EVER SPENT ... was pay a company to come and UNPACK us.
A group of 3 ladies came on moving day to the new house and unpacked the kitchen (organising it all in the cupboards, both children's rooms (putting clothes in cupboards etc) ... OUR clothes, towels and linen AND they made the beds. It was FANTASTIC ... they hung up all our clothes, folded all the stuff that go in drawers ... putting them away in a really organised way ... folded all towels etc ....
And then when they left they left me a lovely vase of flowers. They did all that while DH and I managed to sort out other stuff and keep an eye on the children (4 years old and 10 months old at the time)

Just emigrated to US with two small children. Following on the chain here, get someone to do the packing for you and unpacking as mentioned. Makes life a breaze and far less stressful. If possible, get someone the children know to help look after them and distract them. My mum did it for the first move with two, this time had to do it all myself, but the removal men were great Keep essentials in a bag and mark do not pack and tell everyone that that must not be touched. Kiddies favourite teddies handy for when you get there and pizza for dinner and large bottle of alcolohol for you and your sorted. Good luck

We moved when dd was 2 and ds was 6 weeks. Dd went to her grandparents' on the day before we moved, and was brought back that evening.
I packed one small box with her before she went with her favourite books and toys, and unpacked that with her in the new house, in her new room - don't know if it helped, but she did enjoy the whole thing tremendously. Also, we showed her the house before the move, were given the usborne moving house book, and started packing early (would have have it done for us if I had had the money!!)

Baby just was asleep through the whole thing..

Thanks for all this everyone

Basically as soon as I sold my house I started packing! The contents of the shed, porch, a large proportion of the toys, ornamental type things (pictures etc) and spare electrical items. I did a box a day. TYhe week of the move all I had to pack was the bathroom, kitchen and our clothes and clean the house. I cleaned the bedrooms the day before we moved and then the night before I did the kitchen and bathrooms so once the removals men emptied a room I just had to whop round with the polish and vacuum.

DS, who was 3.5 went to a friends in the morning (one fo the Mums from pre-schoola nd she took him to pre-school for me) but we had DD with us (she was 9 months and quite happy playing with newspaper and bubble wrap)!

we moved on thursday and had the removal company pack for us, but they didn't offer an unpacking service, which to be honest i find the worst bit and the bit that i could have done with the help for. at you ghosty!

tbh the packing was appalling, although thorough, not labelled sufficently boxes for bedrooms mixed up,e'g stuff from linen cupboard in with pictures i assume for padding. and they didn't show any common sense even down too packing the cardboard labels from ds2 socks that had been lef tin the bottom of his sock drwaer and some sprouting potatoes that i had forgotton about in the back of the cupboard!!!

also make sure you pack an overnight bag with change of clothes for everyone, wash stuff, favourite toys, books etc, as unpacking takes far longer than you can imagine. i have had to be really disciplined and have managed to get everything unpacked bar 2 boxes which have my uni work in and in the new house i don't have a cupboard to put it in, so will have to buy one after christmas.

good luck with the move!

oh and get a cleaner in to do the cleaning. the best £56 i have spent as it meant i didn't have to stay behind at the old house just went back to get the keys from the cleaners after 3 hors, to a spotless house.

Oh yes, another vote for packers here.

I'm not so concinced by having packers. It was a great opportunity for us to have a sort out, loads of stuff went to charity, recycling etc and I did lable everything clearly and the unpacking was fine. I am a closet pbsessive compulsive though!

Trouble with packers is that they don't do it in the same way as you would so sorting it out the other end can be more tricky. We found things from different rooms combined and the boxes inadequately labelled and illogically packed. Because we don't have room to unpack everything fully we are still having to check cartons for odd items as we need them - like finding Playmobil Advent calendars packed with a bag of firewood. It is very time consuming to hunt stuff down. Also ours stuffed things like mirrors into drawers of clothes and we only discovered it by accident - imagine if it had got broken in transit somehow and we'd just casually put our hands in . In fairness most of the problem boxes were packed by the same guy. If you have several packers plus kids around it is impossible to keep track of what they are doing.

The moral is to get packers to do it but be really strict about how they go about it. Get the things you want to come out together the other end in the same place and tell them to keep it together. You can always do any sorting out of recycling etc as you prepare each room. If anything needs dismantling make sure they are responsible for putting together again at the other end too, and keep all the screws etc in a separate box. Take photos of furniture beforehand so that you are certain what condition it was in, just in case you need to make a claim afterwards for scratching etc.

Yes, get packers but be really strict and MUCH more organised than I was pre-packing day (they had to pack a total pit of a house up, so it was chaos at new place).

So, get packers and then arrange to be out the whole time they are packing. Oh, and check they haven't cracked a fecking door frame BEFORE you sign them off!