Aargh. Talk me through packing please, before I have a meltdown

[Thurlow]

Two adults, two young children, a bazillion books (literally), a loft that has been a dump repository for a decade, and just one week to do it during which we are all working

Let alone the fact that our poky little terrace isn't actually big enough to store all the bloody boxes once they are packed!

Need half the house packed for Saturday, the other half for the Monday after.

What's the best plan of attack? Decluttering the loft, shed and understairs cupboard this weekend, obviously. Kitchen the night before the final move.

I'm feeling completely overwhelmed, we had meant to have several weeks between exchange and completion but for various reasons it's ended up being a week, and now I'm flapping like a headless chicken... Hit me with tips, please!

Can you afford to get someone in?
Hire a skip?
It is endless
The only trick is to Just keep going.
Label things

No packers available sadly, we've been lucky to even find a removal company that can do a day before Christmas. I am soooo tempted to tell DH we should just hire a skip!

We hired a skip when we moved house - you have to be brutal though!
You could always rent a storage unit for a week and put the boxes in as they’re packed, so they’re not cluttering up your space?

Hire a skip.
I don’t think you have time for a proper organise, it’s time to take a box and throw stuff you want to keep in it then repeat until done.

This sounds like such a stressful situation, but it will all be over in two weeks time and you’ll be sorted either way! Good luck

Also, don’t leave the kitchen til the night before! Do it ASAP, get the stuff out of the way, leave yourselves with a box of the bare minimum and eat take away every night! The kitchen takes ages to do!

Keep asking the removal company if they have packers. Due to our stupid house selling process lots of sales will befalling over/being delayed and they may free up.

Hire a skip. Don’t keep anything that might be useful one day. It won’t be

Buy a house packing kit from Amazon prime

Clear one room downstairs and designate it as the box room

Hire a skip

Get takeaways

Grit your teeth and press on!!

@Soontobe60

Also, don’t leave the kitchen til the night before! Do it ASAP, get the stuff out of the way, leave yourselves with a box of the bare minimum and eat take away every night! The kitchen takes ages to do!

Very true. Kitchens are the worst bit whereas books and bedrooms etc are relatively simple

Book a few tip runs and get rid of most of the stuff you are no longer using. Get everything else out and make up all the boxes, and decide pack or bin.

If you have limited time, you can't faff about doing recycling or regifting or all that malarkey.

We moved to France a few weeks back and everything had to be logged a month before we went on the application to import it all without paying a tax. So if it wasn't on the list, it was got rid of. Most through recycling as we had time to do it.

We are moving to a much bigger place with a garage (a garage!) so there is room to manouevre with stuff that probably needs skipping, though I don't want to end up doing that.

Start with the books but don’t fill big boxes with them - they’ll be too heavy. So, small boxes or one layer in bigger boxes then top up with spare bedding, towels, summer clothes, pictures, photos, mirrors and ornaments wrapped in the bedding/towels etc. Seal and label and stack against a wall. Move furniture into the middle of the room to make space if you need to. You’ll just have to negotiate your way around it temporarily.

Kitchen cupboards next. Pack everything you don’t need this week. Then move on to the cupboards in all the other rooms.

Good luck!

Do one easy box or bag and then a hard one ( like glasses ) so you feel you are getting somewhere

( you are drinking the wine from the one mug you don't pack )

Do you have a friend

@Soontobe60

Also, don’t leave the kitchen til the night before! Do it ASAP, get the stuff out of the way, leave yourselves with a box of the bare minimum and eat take away every night! The kitchen takes ages to do!

This.

Keep ONLY what you absolutely, truly need and will use in the last week.

Label all boxes with contents and where in the new house they will be going, it helps no end when you get to the other end and start unpacking if what you have to unpack is in the room it is intended for.

Be ruthless and dump anything you don't need or want otherwise you are wasting your time and energy packing it.

As someone else said designate one room/area for packed boxes, or hire a storage unit for a couple of weeks and put them in there.

This will take many boxes and many hours work. You really just have to crack on if you haven't anyone to help. Books need to go in small boxes of the movers won't be able to lift them. You will also need loads of bubble wrap for your breakables. If you are clearing out a loft then a skip might be a good idea. No point paying to move stuff you don't need to a new house. Just get rid now. Use marker pens to label the boxes as you go, remember to put what room it's going in. It will help you at the other end.

If you aren't moving miles away get storage. It's worth it so you aren't living totally in chaos after. Book it for a month. Lots of places locally have cheap rates for 6 weeks so maybe the same for you. You need lots of small boxes for books and use them as the bottom layer on the floor. Lighter stuff goes on top. As you pack books work out if you want to let them go and use Ziffit to sell them. They'll send a courier to pick up boxes.

I've just moved from a tiny house with a bazillion books. Books went to storage ahead of time with bric a brac, summer clothes in backpacks etc on top. We decluttered by putting unwanted clothes into charity shop bins and charity shop runs. DVDs and CDs we wanted to keep went into storage folders, the cases went to a specialist recycler. Ate our way through the freezer as far as possible. You don't have a lot of time but you may still be able to Gumtree/Freecycle/Facebook market place stuff.

Do you have a friend

My plan, if it goes wrong, is to insist a lot of friends come around next Friday evening and pack in return for pizza and wine

I'd love to move some into storage and take the time and all that but we don't have the time to manage that, logistically, which is such a pain. I think we're going to have to live in a box fort!

Half books, half soft stuff, got it.

"Holiday" bags packed.

Kitchen packing sooner rather than later.

Oh ..and good luck. I also have a garage now, it's amazing!

Is there any way you could "make" room to put packed boxes. Can you (or DH) decamp to a hotel with the kids leaving the other one to pack and stack boxes everywhere.

We're in a similar position, moving from a smaller house to a bigger house with no spare rooms to put boxes in our current house

Also labelling specific and stuff that isn't going to be needed immediately
Eg kitchen "spice mixes" kitchen "baking stuff"
Kitchen "gadgets (corn cob holders etc)

Use colour coded stickers for your boxes with a different colour for each room. Have a house plan stuck in the door of your new house with a key and tell the packers to consult that when unloading the van. Much quicker.

As well as colour coding, label with contents.

If you're in a massive hurry, I'd only get rid of stuff you know you don't want - you don't have time to sort. If you're moving to a bigger place, you can do it at the other end.

You basically need to make your house into a box maze if it's small.

Get vacuum storage bags for duvets, pillows, bulky coats, soft toys and cushions.

Actually a skip is ideal,

Books. (I'm an expert on this one, I have over a thousand books just for my own work, most of them very large, plus work books for 2 other adults, and then all the fiction...)
DO NOT pack books in large boxes, you'll do your back in lifting them. Most removal companies will supply cardboard boxes (hire or buy, ours let you keep some or all of them for a few weeks and then return them to get the deposit back) that stack efficiently in their vehicles, and they will tell you the max size box to use for books. That won't be large, but will be plenty heavy enough.

If you have to get boxes of books down stairs, buy a few planks/boards, line them up up the stairs, and slide the boxes down (carefully, don't just let them go!) rather than carrying them. Faster and safer than teetering down with heavy boxes when you can't see your feet.

We bought second-hand plastic packing boxes, the sort shops like Asda use for groceries with hinged lids, and used them for various things, but for books they were a two-person lift. Great for china, as very strong, but china still needs packing in tissue, bubble plastic, or that squidgy foam sheet stuff if it's valuable.

Buy bubble plastic from your remover or a place like Viking- it's much cheaper in a big roll.

Label cardboard boxes with a nice thick felt tip so it can be read quickly and easily- label both its contents, and which room it will go in. Use the same room names to label the doors of rooms at the new house so removers know where the boxes will go. Colour code if you're very organised.

I painted blackboard paint on the plastic boxes and used chalk to label them, which could be wiped off and used again (we had a 2-stage move).

Start at the top and work down , just don't stop in any available moment .! I have packed up loads of houses and moved . Just get going , doing something daily is better than nothing! Bin and charity pile and pack the rest ! Only meant out what you need a

Agree with. It leaving kitchen to last minute! We packed up loads of our kitchen weeks before the move. We just kept a small number of items.

Also recommend a clear out too. Only box stuff you will use. If you have used things in the last 12 months you probably never will! So be brutal.