What to do in preparation for removals company on Monday?

[KillashandraRee]

We're moving on Monday and the removals company are packing for us but I've never used a company before and have no idea what I need to do to prep for them. Do I need to organise/ tidy/ clean? Help!

Pack anything you don't want them to see - underwear drawer etc.

I bought instant coffee, ordinary tea and biscuits in as I don't normally have any of those.

Have some cash ready to tip them. I gave my guys £50 each. They did a fab job but are low paid so was a good boost for them.

I had cleaners come in and start on rooms as they finished so didn't clean but did tidy. They were unphased by packing slightly messy teenage bedroom though.

As above - clear out anything you can to make it easier.

The packers I used were amazingly organised and they will just systematically go through each room.

have one space where you keep stuff you don't want touched - i.e. if you are taking some bags with things for overnight etc.

Pull out anything you could feasibly want in the next month or two _ i still have unpacked boxes after four months and it's a nightmare when I want a specific book or something.

And have a corner with tea, coffee, biscuits - I went and did bacon sandwich runs to keep them going too.

It was amazing having packers - am dreading the next move which I will have to do more economically and pack myself!

Make sure you empty all bins- throw away any rubbish etc- mine pack everything. Try and put any bits with relevant stuff based on where its going to go in your new place- they don't really look at stuff and think about it- it just goes where it comes from.

I love packers- I would never go back

pack a valuables bag; jewellery, passport, important documents, phone, car keys etc. Keep with you at all times.

Pack a suitcase as if you were going away for a long weekend.

Pack a box of all important paperwork (including related to move) as well as things like passports etc

Pack a box of food essentials (as if you were camping - coffee, teabags, sugar etc... including snacks for movers and you)

Pack a box (eg shoe-box) of essential tools (we had a special thing to take apart / put together bunk bed, which movers didn't have). Plus we needed to pull out some fitted furniture to get our furniture in. Plus we had to pull up the downstairs loo carpet, that hadn't been changed for about 20 years, and made the house smell like a public toilet. I couldn't sleep for a night with it in the house!

Everything above went in car with us.

I packed things like contents of bathroom cabinet into shoe-boxes, as in previous move the packers had chucked all these tiny things into the bottom of a large box, and thrown in the loo brush on top. Lovely.

Depends how much time you have...

Oh, and keep out lots of marker pens to mark up the boxes. In two recent moves the packers kept packing the pens!

Don't let them pack all your shoes when you are still in your slippers.

Chocolate hobnobs - they seem to live on them.

Tons of sugar for tea, loads of teacups. A tray so they can take tea outside and have a smoke at the same time.

Cash for tips

They'll label the top of the box. Not much use when they are all stacked a mile high in your new home. Get a fat marker and try to label stuff as you go.

Kitchen stuff - small stuff like a little silver spoon that sat on top of the tea caddy went awol. Turned up eventually nicely packed with other small detritus but worth keeping anything special or essential that you use every day in a little box ready for the other end.

Front door mat inside and out.

Woolly jumper - the front door will be open all flipping day.

Stash precious stuff in your car boot including anything precious you don't want broken like a sculpture etc.

If you've got time to sort through and weed out stuff you don't want any longer then do it now. It's a pain to do it at the other end when you are trying to find new homes for everything at the same time.

This is brilliant I hadn't thought of any of the above! Will be buying hobnobs/ visiting cash machine etc tomorrow.

We've also got the removal men coming in on Monday to pack. This post was most informative! Hope your move goes ok.

We packed a suitcase for 2-3 days inc bedding and other essentials.

We also took curtains down.

Our packing company wanted us to take everything down from the loft. One we got a quote from said all pictures should be down. We had taken them down in advance anyway so we could take nails out and fill holes.

Did they mention if they are taking beds and other big fur tie apart or if you need to? Have you got the right Allen key to hand if necessary?

Some of our curtain poles needed one too to get the curtains off.

Furniture