Moving home hacks?

[Mazzatron]

Hi everyone.
Moving to a new house in a new town about 1 hour away, in early June.

Have moved plenty before but only as a single person. This time moving with husband, 3 year old, 1 year old and exuberant Labrador.

Anyway, feeling a bit daunted and wondered if anyone has any useful tips / hacks for moving, general types (like packing and organisation type tips) and also moving with very young children.

Thank you in advance. Hope it makes sense I'm v tired!

My starting point would be arranging childcare for the day (even better if overnight, but I realise many of us don't have that available).

Give the dog to someone for the day and the children of possible.

Pay extra to have everything packed for you. It's so worth it.

We moved last week with 3.5yr old and 4.5 month old, it was chaos, but we're getting there!

Definitely pay for packing, ours wasn't that much more expensive compared to how much time it would've taken me. Pack an overnight bag and put all essentials in it, remember chargers and pack dishes, cutlery,cups, tea towels etc for the first night/morning.

Arrange a supermarket shop delivery for the next day, although I loved escaping to the supermarket the next day and it was handy to add things we couldn't find onto the list last minute.

Accept that you'll have stuff in boxes for longer than you'd like!! We still have a lot of things in boxes. They've been opened and we know where they are going, but we don’t have the the furniture storage options to unpack them.

Best of luck!

all the above! But see if dog can be away over night (kennels if needs be) and the same for your child of old enough for GP sleepover. Easier for you to sort out their room etc. Decide between you and Dh a list of must do and what you will each do. Eg read meters and send in readings, who’s going with the van, who’s picking up/dropping off keys. What time the estate agent closes. Who’s responsible for getting dog and child to whoever they are meant to be. Who’s driving what car etc etc.
Also colour code boxes. So label boxes per room, but then colour code them red, Amber, green so you know exactly which boxes must be opened as you arrive for which room and which can be left a day or two and what can be left until your next move. Eg cutlery plates kettle are kitchen + red but books are lounge + green.

Start emptying cupboards and getting rid of stuff you don’t need tomorrow.

Throw out stuff with vigor. Then do it again.
Pay for professional packers.
Rehome dog and dc for as long as possible over move.

Have a small suitcase backpack and a box that you take separate from the movers.

Suitcase, change of clothes for next day, nightwear, toilet bag for essentials, towels, any fav toys

Backpack, containing all important documents, passports, birth cert etc things like that.

Box, kettle tea/coffee, cups, couple plates/limited cutlery etc to see you through. Duvets/covers/pillows, toilet roll, cleaning products washing up liquid, kitchen roll, tea towel.

Make your beds as soon as you can, you will be shattered later on and just want to flop into bed, earlier you do this the better believe me.

each time I have moved (which is quite a few times) I always do the same, saves time hunting for towels, bedding etc.

Have a look at your routines, morning and evening in particular. Pack all of the things essential to those routines in a few bags to go into the car with you if possible.

Eg, coffee and tea making equipment
Blanket, toy, pyjamas for child's bedtime
Medications
Small Suitcase with 2 days worth of clothing
Dog food
Etc

That way if you haven't unpacked all of the boxes for a room you can still deal with the essentials.

Book a skip & get rid of as much crap as possible, it's OK saying you will take stuff to the charity shop but you will end up taking half of it with you. Bag up a set of bedding for each bed & take that along with the kettle, milk, tea, coffee, sugar, some pop & mugs, spoons etc with you in the car, don't forget to put some cleaning stuff & the hoover as well so you can have a quick hoover & dust anything the previous owners have missed before the van arrives. Have all essential phone numbers in your phone so you can sort the broadband, phone, gas & electric if you need to. Don't plan on cooking the night you move in, get a takeaway, make sure you have plates & cutlery where you can find it. Have some light bulbs, a torch, make sure you know where the fuse board, meters & stopcock are.

Have a 'useful stuff' box for the little bits of things that you will need to set up each room. Power cords and adaptors, remote controls, tools.

Buy ziplock bags and strong tape so as big furniture is being disassembled, you can tape the nuts and bolts to it so they don't get separated.

Don't bother packing anything that is already in something that can be easily moved e.g. drawers, baskets... in fact throw more things into drawers and baskets so you have less to pack! Pop those in the car and leave the big stuff for the truck.

Don't forget to set aside some cleaning equipment to do the empty house.

Oh and don't pack the keys to the old house!

qr code stickers and a companion app. You take photos and tag things and you put them into boxes. The database you create is searchable in case you need to find anything. We never have managed to unpack quickly so a good list is essential.

Get some sturdy zip loc bags and when you dismantle anything, eg beds, put all the screws etc in the bag, write what they are for and tape the bag to a piece of that furniture.

Send kids to grandparents the night before and the night of the move. Dog in kennels.

Get a skip now, and declutter.

Make a few freezer meals to eat for the first few days.

Have a bag of cleaning stuff at the ready - when we moved, our new house was grim! We had to clean the kitchen cupboards out before we could put anything in them!

Put a post on your local Facebook site asking for packing boxes - we got about 30 from someone this way, then gave them away on FB once we’d unpacked.

You can pay packers to rebuild your beds. Don't take duvet covers and pillow cases off, one less thing to do when you want to go to bed.
Get wardrobe boxes. Clothes go straight in still on hangers and can be put back with no fuss. Or get bin bags, put rubber band round hanger hooks and poke hole in bin bag. Pull drawstring underneath and transport like that.
Be prepared to clean before unpacking, despite looking OK on viewings our kitchen was all sticky! Elbow Grease is good for cleaning out cupboards.

Pay for packers. It was only an extra £200 on top of removals when I moved and they were amazing. Like locusts swarming on your house - I found it fascinating to watch. Just don’t forget to empty your kitchen because they will move it full of rubbish 😳 Likewise any garden pots with old soil and dead plants!
They rebuilt our beds on arrival at the new house too (at that point we were a family of 5) plumbed in our washing machine. I will love those men forever!
Buy the packers/removal men cakes or rolls and a couple of cases of beers.

Start now and declutter

My experience is its the 3yo who is likely to be the most unsettled... old enough to realise a change but to young to understand why. Especially if the move involves nursery, classes, playgrounds etc changing too.

Get their room sorted ASAP. Talk to them now about their big girl/boy room, so it can be made just right quickly with their toys etc. If they are used to having grandparents etc to visit in the house, make sure they visit quickly too. Let's them know their family is still there. Identify a new soft play/playground/ woodland etc as quickly as you can too.

General tips... label boxes with new location if the house has a different layout. Label the sides of boxes too. During our last move we got a storage locker for a few weeks, and would just retrieve a car load at a time. Meant we weren't trying to unpack around the boxes, and could work out where we wanted furniture etc.

Pay for packers. Ship the children and dog off somewhere for the moving day.

If you cannot pay for packers buy coloured stickers so that each room has a colour, make a note of what goes in the box using its current location. So the cupboard under the stairs, or the drawer of the sideboard. If you can find something now then you will know what box it is in when you move. Sticker every side of the box as when they are stacked you will not see the top. Number the sticker.

I colour coded the rooms, so when we got the keys I taped up the colour above the doorway so the movers put the right boxes in the right room. I had 2 colours for the kitchen, one for stuff I don't use daily, one for daily stuff.

Bedding we stripped and put the duvets etc in the car so we had that and the movers packed the beds in last. They actually did it over 2 days so they took all the non-essentials the day before then everything else the following morning. That way the children's beds went in first and we made them plus ours so if anything else we could just crawl into bed.

Yep. I did this!!

Can I ask all those recommending packers how much that cost? Do you know separately to the removal lorry costs or was it just al part of a package?

If your budget can stretch to it, put everything non-essential into storage ahead of time and retrieve it as and when you've found somewhere for it to go in the new house.

Thanks for starting this thread OP! And thanks everyone else for all the helpful tips. I’m also moving in July so will be watching this thread with interest!

If you get the removal men to pack for you - do you have to do anything in advance? Or do you literally just leave everything where it normally is (clothes in drawers, ornaments and books on shelves etc) and just leave them to it?

Our removal men packed everything, including the Bin complete with apple core! Actually they didn't pack underwear, we were asked to pack that and put it in a suitcase before hand.
It was listed as a separate cost, it was several hundred pounds but a small part of the overall moving costs.
They move at incredible speed packing everything in a room.

Thats the thing with packers... they are quick as they won't discriminate between junk, memories or essentials. Their box labelling can be off (it took me a few months to find the school uniform in the box marked ski gear... it was mostly ski gear bu the school uniform was underneath!) But they know about weight distribution and packing fragile stuff. I think over 7 moves, including 4 International we had one broken ornament and a cracked teapot.

Just pack any private stuff first.

Clear out the loft, garage and aged first. I had to convince DH that no we did not need to take various offcuts of timber.
If you have loads of books get them packed away in advance.
Pack your hoover in the car. Aim to get to the new house ahead of the removal company so that you can hoover the carpets before the furniture starts to be offloaded.