Packing your house is a labyrinth of bullshit

[Pleaselettheholidayend]

I'm right in the middle.

I know it will end but it's awful hahahaha.

Just found a bag with a single shoe with a hole in the sole??????????

I won't cry.

I'm divorcing ExH and the flat is to be sold. He is sentimental about stuff whereas as I'm a slash & burn sort who finds little value is possessions. Anyway, I've watched him sort through his dtuff and there is SO MUCH he's putting into storage whereas I could probably put all my things in one large box 🤣. But along the way I've shies I haven't worn for years, odd bits of material, tiles for two kitchens ago and dried up pots of paint. It's ridiculous.

Just to add to the chaos - husband has removed the bath panel because he left a note with his name on when he last removed it to fix a leaky pipe and doesn't want anyone finding it now we're leaving???

When we moved the sellers kept offering to leave us stuff - furniture and ornaments… we had furniture and were bursting out of our previous house so no, we didn’t want their shit (we had plenty of our own!).

Thus is my husband! Including the tiles and paint plus old appliances we have replaced as ‘there’s nothing wrong with them’! 🤪

And again, my dh has accepted the offer of some furniture and appliances. He’s going to regret it when we move in. Dawned on him yesterday we will have 5 sofas! 🤣

Last time we moved we had the packing done and they did the entire house by 11am. I've never seen anything like it. They left us a bed and perhaps a sofa overnight, and then came back the next day when we'd cleaned the whole house and shoved everything in the van by about 10.30am. It was mainly painless and I cannot recommend it enough.

Completely feel your pain, OP and everyone else counting down to D day.

We are one week away from completion for our sale, paid for our movers to also pack (only £290 extra?! Bit their hands off tbh), but the last two weeks have been constantly trips to the tip to get rid of yet more stuff we've unearthed? I can't believe the amount of rubbish we pulled out of the cellar, I'm pretty sure they went IN to the cellar when we moved in 7 years ago and haven't seen since.

But now I am getting anxiety because it feels like I'm not doing anything productive when we're out in a week's time and our stuff's still just out, it doesn't feel right 😂

Tempting just to bin the lot of it isn't it

Yes!!!

Is there any sorting of things going on when packers come in? Does it make unpacking a bit more of a job? We really didn’t like the idea of packers but obviously now with a week to go are regretting the decision!

Thing is even if you get packers you still need to do a massive declutter and clear out. That's what takes the time vs the actual packing. When we moved last year (international but still) it took me probably 2 working weeks to go through everything and the packers packed it all and got it in the container in 6 hours.

no- they cannot use any discretion. If there is a broken toilet seat in the understairs cupboard, it will be packed!!

They packed a bin in mine. A full bin. Full of kitchen rubbish. Which went into storage for a month!

I'd still always use a full pack though, just hover around them.

Do they unpack for you or just leave all the boxes for you to sort out?

Post-divorce, We are madly packing just to get the house ready for estate agents. The teens have sent boxes & boxes of investor Lego to their grandmother's house.

I cannot find things. Things I need. Valuable useful things. Like stamps, favourite clothing, medications, gadgets, chargers and even cash (Euros). Because it's all been packed away somewhere (!!) Irk. Luckily one can buy one stamp if required & the 200 Euros were a gift so I guess I can let go if never seen again. One EA came round & said he'd give us advice on decluttering before pics are taken... so evidently still too much viewable (!)

A bunch of things are out because I am moving out end of April & need to take some things with me, it will go in car (to bursting) when we put house on market (& I am away for work)

I had a bit of a meltdown afterwards then pulled myself together and packed down another bunch of stuff I could live without seeing for 12m. I am just thinking my food mixer was in that area though, and I don't know where xH put it (sigh). xH broke up some furniture so that area of house now looks less cluttered. We have given away several bit of furniture but maybe should have kept so we had somewhere else to put the useful stuff so it wasn't visible, but then I still won't remember "that" is where that specific useful stuff went.

You can choose. I do a huge declutter and sort so that everything is “together”- eg I’d go round the house and gather all stationary/ chargers etc into big plastic boxes. I then get packers to pack and I unpack because I like time to decide where to put things.

Advice : If,you haven't had sometime in your hand for the past two years , get rid .
Important documents don't count.

I'm going on a trip that should involve birdwatching. One of my things i can't find (trying to tidy up may be reason, and everything has moved around, and lots been packed up, so I don't know when they went missing) are my small binoculars. I loved them. Now bought a replacement pair. They weren't in my hands for > "two years". I wish I could have avoided that £90 expense.

We are eyeing up which additional furniture to give away once we know we exchange.

Ours offered (and we took them up on it) to leave things like wardrobes which weren't fitted but fitted the space they were in really well. They're not to my personal interior design taste but they've tided us right over that period where we needed to buy more furniture (we're moving two kids sharing a room into separate rooms).

We moved last week, and the family we were buying off had booked packers for Wednesday and then movers for Thursday. The packers cancelled at the last minute. Our vendors were relying on them to do everything and had not delcluttered/organised at all. It was chaos - our vendors were still in the property at 6pm (we completed at 1.30pm). They hadn't taken down their light fittings so were just cutting through the wires leaving us with bare, live wires. They didn't have time to take down curtain poles properly so some have just been ripped out. Nothing was removed from the garden at all. Nothing has been cleaned nor had the bins been emptied. The only light we had for the first night was a few bedside lamps and torches I'd managed to find quickly - which made things really difficult. We managed to get an electrician to come round the next day to put up some pendants which cost us an arm and a leg.

I realise that our vendors were let down by the packers, but they clearly hadn't done even the tiniest bit of preparation and have left us with a massive amount of stress and expense. Be Prepared!

Also feeling this pain 😭😭😭

Sounds like packers just literally put things in boxes so not sure how helpful it would have been for us. It’s the decluttering and ‘sorting’ that we are struggling with!!

Right in the middle of the move now. Removals team are a good send, as we are completing much more speedily thank I imagined!

Slightly OT but if you're packing yourself, here's my tip

Buy tape - I think it's electrical tape?
Red, yellow and green.
Anything important put green tape on the box eg cutlery, washing up powder. The boxes you need immediately
(Put it overlapping the corners so you can see the tape no matter how the box is oriented/stacked)
Anything you'll need in the short term put yellow tape on eg the extra plates and sauce pans
Anything you should probably throw away put red tape on - the surplus water bottles, the kitchen things you'll "use one day"
Bonus points for just throwing the red boxes away unopened in a year's time 🤣

Obviously label the boxes too - kitchen/cutlery
Kitchen/plates
Kitchen/surplus water bottles.

But it does help in the new house to know which boxes you need to open first

I moved 3 times in 4 years and it was awful. I took was tempted to just leave with the DCats and a small bag.

I decluttered ruthlessly and I've been careful buying things and yet still moving in here I've got too much shit! How?