Help! Moving house and don't know where to start!

[PPL]

So, we have packers and they arrive on Wednesday. They then pack up the van on Thursday and we meet them at our new home a week later.

We are a mess - haven't started organising anything and DS (18mo) leaves chaos in his wake. As they all do. We have piles of junk everywhere. Clothes everywhere. An over flowing washing basket. Toys in every room. A full fridge and cupboards.

Where do we start? Help! Do we just leave the packers to it and hope for the best?

Never had packers myself.

Give the baby some pots and pans and a wooden spoon when you sort the kitchen, that sort of thing.

Packers will do room by room, and not organize or tidy anything. This means that all the toys in every room will be packed together with any thing else in that room. I had packers once, and found the toilet brush resting on top of the towels. I suggest throwing away loo brushes, to be honest!

If I were you, I would prioritize getting toyboxes, and tidy toys into these. Then you will know what is what.

Start eating out your fridge, cupboards and freezers.

Do your laundry.
Pack your suitcases with what you will need straight away, including some toys and books. Then the packers can take the rest and you wont have to worry.

I also suggest decluttering, taking to the charity shops everything you know you wont need, so wont have to pack and unpack.

Thanks. I did manage to sort out some charity shop clothes this morning while DS slept.

So the packers basically pack whatever they see? So the most important thing is to at least have everything in the correct room? Yes will definitely do suitcases for the first week.

Laundry - its so hard to keep on top of isn't it! I could do it all today and tommorrow (which I will) but whatever I do there will always be a load of dirty washing that will have to be moved with us...

So whats the worst that can happen - the pack all my piles of junk and I have to sort it out at the other end?

Yes, try to ensure that the different items are in the correct rooms, to avoid total chaos.

You dont want to be on the other end, with 50 plus boxes, and find that each box contains a mixture of toiletries, cups, toys and clothes. It will be a nightmare!

Yes that does sounds mightmarish.

Am assuming the packers will use some degree of common sense - eg items on bookshelf in a box. Items on coffee table in a box. Items in lounge cupboard in a box. Or do they mix it all up as long as it came from the same room?

I just moved last week so this is all very fresh in my mind.
Take it in little steps. To make the unpacking easier at the other side I'd do this:

• take a black bag into each room and chuck anything you don't want into it. Eg. Empty shampoo bottles from bathroom, unusd dishes in kitchen, anything ugly, rubbish under the sofas, food in cupboards that can't be sealed.

• Get laundry from each room, even if its only slightly used towels, bed linen,rugs, curtains, etc. You don't want fresh clean clothes mixed with these.

• With toys, I kept a small box of toys out but packed everything else into the correct sets and put them into plastic toy boxes. I doubt the packers will be putting the sets together!

• Food, eat contents of freezer and as much of fridge as possible. When packing food, separate in plastic bags as its inevitable a jar will not be closed properly.

I don't know what packers do, never used them myself, but I enjoyed the packing part. Do they provide newspapers for wrapping glassware? If not, stock up.

Take the laundry in bin bags to a laundrette and pay for a service wash. It's worth every penny!

Encourage the packers to label everything as much as possible, at least so that you know which cupboard it came out of. Ours labelled an awful lot of stuff with just the name of the room and 'miscellaneous' so it was a nightmare to unpack - we had to open all the boxes and label them ourselves before we could really start unpacking.

Try to get rid of as much rubbish as you can but it's not the end of the world if some of it moves with you. I had an accident the week before we moved last year so wasn't able to do all the sorting out I was planning to do but it didn't really matter in the end. I think I'd prioritise going through your food cupboards, fridge and freezer and either chucking stuff or planning to use it.

Our packers had shown very little common sense.