Moving house... tips please...

[winnie]

Hi everyone,

We shall be moving house in the next month or so. I am terribly excited... but obviously want the actual move to be as painless as possible. We are not moving far, we are staying in the same town but I'd really appreciate any tips. We have a 12 year old and a toddler of 14 months.
Thanks in advance,

We moved two weeks ago, and apart from my acres of books which are still in boxes waiting for shelves to be put up, we are pretty much straight.

We started packing just after exchange - so just two weeks to do it in. Hubby and I then took the day off before moving day and just stripped the place bare. We left our son's room until the day before so everything was 'normal' for him right up to the last minute.

The removers brought hanging boxes with them for our clothes which we packed on the day. With the other boxes we labelled what was in them roughly and which room in the new house they were supposed to go into. This worked reasonably well, the kitchen stuff ended up in the kitchen, however, some of the boxes ended up in the wrong rooms, but once we started unpacking it didn't really matter at all.

Would it be a good idea to have a meeting with your removers to find out what kind of system they like? Do they prefer colour coding, or do they like just a vague idea? It would cut down on the guess work.

I brought some cheapy crates from Homebase and packed all the essential stuff in them, like the kettle, coffee, food blah, blah, blah. We put all those things in the car and took them ourselves. I'd also recommend having a box of cleaning stuff put aside as well - we left our old place as clean as we could and I wouldn't put anything in the cupboards in the new place until I had given them the once over! The tip about taking your bed linen in the car was also excellent. The beds were the first thing I made up and I was so grateful I did.

We collected our ds late Friday afternoon on the day we moved (he's 3) and he had a great time running round exploring. He helped me get his room straight, putting his books on his book shelves and getting his toys out. He had a lovely bath in the 'new bathroom' and went to bed only about an hour later than he normally does. We had a minor upset when he said he wanted to go to bed in his old house, but it didn't last long and by the next evening he went to bed no fuss.

Good luck. I'm sure it will go very smoothly on the day.

Nooooo - don't have everything delivered to one room! We moved in January and still have a spare room and a garage full of boxes. It took us 5 months to find our mobile phone chargers...

Label every box with a room and, if you can, rough contents. I printed loads of room labels from the PC

"Ditch" the toddler although if you think it would help, get them back to see the "old" house is all empty and all their toys have been packed and to say goodbye.

Do not drop the jar of sugar on arrival at your new house - 99% of removal men take sugar in their tea and will NOT be amused! Trust me.

Try not to move to the top of a hill on the wettest, windiest day of the year - it's not funny.

Pack yourselves overnight bags so you're not searching to tooth brushes, PJs and favourite bears when you're all tired and irritable at the end of the day.

Not sure about colour coding... I'd go for labeling with names - most removal men can manage to read "kitchen" rather than guessing or being told constantly that green means bathroom.

Good luck!

Make the beds as soon as you arrive. Then you can always collapse as soon as you feel like it.

Label boxes on the sides, as someone's already said. Our professional packers labelled them all on the top, then piled the boxes vertically 4 deep so we couldn't see what was in any of them.

Don't let them pack your briefcase. There were 70 boxes in our study. The briefcase was in one of them. It contained my diary, bleep, mobile, ID card, notes for meetings on the Monday and my brain.

Pack food for yourselves and removal men and take in your own car. Encourage them with tea, sandwiches, biscuits, cake etc.

Professional cleaners in new house - brilliant! We left our house spotless and arrived to 10 years' accumulated dirt and grease. They'd hoovered the middle of the carpets and that was it.

Ensure the garden is toddler-safe in advance. Check that the baby can't open the outside doors, that if there's a pond it's drained, that gates can be closed and bolted and there are no inviting gaps in the fence.

Don't get in the bath with your toddler just before the removal men haul the double wardrobe up the stairs without dismantling it. You will be trapped in there for an hour & get wrinkled up. The little one will hear, remember and reproduce every expletive.

Pack delicate toys yourself. They seem to treat all toys as indestructible. It took my mother a whole weekend of patient work to untangle the bee mobile.

pack kettle, cups & tea/coffe last. nothing worse than a grumbling thrty crew!

Definitely pay to get it all packed for you if possible.

Having moved twice in 5 months, I'd go along with the professional packers option if you can afford to. We packed everything except the kitchen the second time around, and that was a lot less stressful than doing the whole lot. I didn't trust the men with my best crystal and china, so packed that myself, and it came in our car. No breakages!! Think carefully about where things will be going in the new place. And whether they will fit up the stairs or through doorways etc. No matter how carefully you label, you still seem to get hasseled with requests of "where do you want this love?" and I ended up just directing them to the garage. If I can't find anything, its because its still under piles of rubbish in there!
Definitely have a "picnic" for you for lunch and most likely supper too, as well as the workers. Our men didn't finish unloading the lorry until 8pm. Keep lots of drink options handy. Our men wanted tea/coffee on arrival, cold drinks at lunchtime, including lager! and teas again at 4ish. Plus yet more cold drinks ad hoc through the day (it was warm!). It cost a small fortune in catering!

ds1's room was the last to be packed and first to be unpacked by arrangement so that it could be set up for naps and safe haven zone! We also have 3 cats and wish, wish, wish, we'd put them in a cattery for a couple of days. We lost them in the attic eaves at one point! They're fine now!

I was 26weeks pregnant with ds2 with the 2nd move and this at least was a vague help. I managed to completely unpack and arrange my kitchen at 2am, through some great pg insomnia!! Also having mum and mil around helped with entertaining ds1 and making drinks etc. Plus unpacking once everyone had gone.

DON'T, DON'T, DON'T leave packing precious mobiles til the last minute. Our fish mobile from the Maldives has never been the same since. I had to restring it with fishing line after failing to unravel it.

Thank you all - this is all really helpful. Keep it coming! We haven't moved since we've had kids, and we've always moved before, so it's all very new to me.

BOOKS - the removals company have supplied big boxes (18" square, 10" deep), to put books in. When they are packed with books I can't begin to lift them, and it's hard work to push them. I've queried this once with the company, and they say it's fine, that's what they prefer. (But not the 20" deep boxes full of books). I'm still sceptical, and I don't want to be repacking boxes of books on the day. (Unfortunately we have thousands of books). What do you think? Are these guys just incredibly strong? I'm not surprised they need lots of food and drink if they can shift stuff like this?!

Make up the beds as soon as you can when you get there, so once you've finished you can just fall into bed and dont have to hassle with sheets etc when you're pooped!
Someone told us re gardens to plant your tress soon after you arrive, as by the time you've finished decorating the house (2 yrs!!) and turn to the garden they'll have grown and become established. We didnt, 4 yrs on ,finished house and wish we had!

KMG - we had loads of books and some of our boxes were incredibly heavy. DH marked them up as such and it didn't phase them. I couldn't believe how easily the removal men picked them up! These guys are phenomenal! One of them just picked up my larder fridge by himself, carried it all the way from the lorry up my 60ft long garden path and put it in the kitchen! I was surprised they didn't use trolleys, every box was moved by hand and it was only the largest things like the sofa and the bed that the two of them worked together. Often they would take a couple of boxes at a time which dh and I had trouble lifting just one!

We had just two guys and they worked like absolute donkeys - they had one cup of tea when they arrived and then they drank that on the hoof. They didn't want to stop for lunch and just cracked on. They arrived at 10 am and by 2.30pm the lorry was unloaded at our new place. I was so impressed. We gave them a crate of beer and a cash tip.

My next tip would be make sure you find out where your local late shop/take away is, because come 9pm you'll be ready to eat a dead horse but anything more than pulling the lid off a packet will be too much effort!

Finally - don't forget to read your meters in your old place and in your new. I found I could inform TXU Energi of my meter readings online, as well as notify the TV licence people via the Net (you've got to have your licence number to hand).

If you do Tescos or Sainsburys home delivery, book some food to arrive the next morning - easy bung-in-the-oven stuff, plus wine of course. Also some chocolate for treats for the children !

Ok - these removal guys have been packing, and lugging stuff out of our house and hopefully into our new house - 2 days work in all. How much should I tip them? No idea as to what is the going rate - last time we had something like this it was just moving my husband's precious piano - for which he tipped £20 each (he is very attached to it!) This time it is the piano and everything else (including 45 boxes of books according to the estimate!). I'd be grateful for a rough ballpark?

KMG - don't just label where you want the box to go, also make a note of where the stuff in it came from - I found it very useful when trying to locate things immediately after the move, because I knew where they all were in the old house.

We had a professional packer in to pack for us and it was well worth the money - he did it far quicker and far more efficiently than we would have.

If you have cats, get them into a cattery if you can. We couldn't, because our move was the
Friday before the Jubilee Bank Holiday and everything was booked up, and shifting cats around and making sure they were in safe rooms all the time was an extra hassle we could have done without. Plus, one was very hacked off because she wasn't allowed out to inspect the work in progress, while the other was deeply traumatised by the whole thing and has taken weeks to calm down.

Dh used to be in the business and he recommends around £40 -£50 if it was a two-day job as removal chaps hate shifting pianos. Oh, and he also recommends loads of cups of tea and biscuits.

Thanks for all the advice. We are now well and truly in. Thanks particularly for the advice about tipping - I wouldn't have thought of it at all (dreadful, isn't it?) But the guys did a terrific job for us, they worked amazingly hard, and it was good to 'thank them properly', and they seemed well chuffed to get a tip.