Combining temporary storage of house contents with moving to new home

[harriettenightingale]

Anyone done it? We are renting, have been given two months notice as our landlord is selling and have decided to buy. We realise we likely won’t be able to seamlessly move from our rental to our as yet to be purchased new home, so we will have to put all our stuff into storage and rent a room or stay with family. Appreciate any tips!

The removal firm storage can be cheaper than storage lockers, but they charge you for access so you need to be really organised about what you will and won’t need.

I used the removal firm storage a few times and it worked really well. They pack up your house as normal, then move you into your new house as normal….you just don’t see your things for a few months 🤣

Years ago, we did similar- except it all went into the garage of a family member.

Make sure it's well packed and labelled.

Thanks, that sounds perfect. How do you manage the dates, if you don’t yet have a moving date? Do you just call them when you have a projected moving in date to book the removal van to transport it to the new house? Apologies for what are probably stupid questions!

Very good advice, my last move was really chaotic!

My one I gave them an estimated time I was looking to move but they will store indefinitely- it doesn’t matter if you take months longer, they don’t care. They charged me by the month per container direct debit at the start of the month, and then when I had a completion date I phoned up and booked in the move out of storage. It was midway through the month so they took the rest of the months storage fees and offset that against the move cost.

They will tell you as part of the estimate how many containers they think you’ll need and then once it’s in storage they will confirm the number.

I think my 3 bed house was £210 per month in London.

It's a means to an end, but you will pay moving costs twice, plus the costs of storage. We had to do it, but it wasn't cheap.

I paid half price by paying for storage for 3 months upfront. Emptied the loft and put all long-term stuff into the storage space so when it came to the actual removals it was literally furniture, kitchen essentials and clothes and so moving was far easier and cheaper. If I'd have been smarter I'd have thrown far more stuff out at this point too, as 8 years since moving there are still boxes we've never gone into that moved from loft to storage to loft!

Thanks for all the advice! I will shop around. It’s Southampton area if anyone knows a good firm.

We've moved this way twice now - way less stressful than doing the 'out/in' in a single day - once was before an international move where we rented short term after selling our house, with 75% of our stuff in storage and second time we put 99% of stuff in storage and lived with family for two months between selling and buying.

I used an independent removal firm who had excellent reviews. They did our downsize in several stages, including packing up and taking stuff into storage, making special crates to protect a couple of things, then doing the actual move. They kept a load of our stuff in storage and made further deliveries and unpacked whenever we were ready.

They sorted all the logistics, dates and everything. Brilliant service.

Go for a local removal firm if you can rather than a national chain, would be my advice.

We did similar with our move. I think we were charged £100 per week for storage, which is a lot for more than a week or two. So make sure you know approximately how many containers you will need as they will charge per container. If it's longer than that you might need to consider self storage but then you will have twice the moving costs.

Also declutter ruthlessly. It helped us so much and it means everything you move to the new house has a purpose and the new house feels a lot more spacious and easy to keep tidy. We unpacked totally within a week, no boxes left in the spare room at all.

It was only short term for us, but we went o on holiday for 2 weeks while the moved stored our stuff. It was wonderful! Getting the moved to pack is worth every penny

out removal company did this for us - poked it up, stored in a dry container in a secure compound and brought it out when we finally had a home
. one company who we could trust saved a lot of grief and hassle

Just want to thank OP for starting this thread - we will be moving shortly (chain completion/move the same day which we have never done before), and I have been fretting at the amount of stuff that we will have to move on one day and trying to clean etc - we were thinking about moving some stuff out beforehand into storage but I had no idea there were companies that would store AND move!

We put everything into store with our removers (except for clothes, paperwork and some personal possessions).

We booked last minute as we lost our purchase two weeks before completion. Our buyer was adamant he wanted to complete on a set day or nothing but his solicitor messed around so much it had to slip by three days and we had to get another remover on a Friday for completion the following Monday. Admittedly, we were very lucky to get another remover but probably easier for them as going into store.

I will be researching all our local options tomorrow, thanks for all advice! Really helpful.

We're renting and have stuff in storage between houses. Our movers/storers have been amazing, so efficient and helpful.
We had one glitch so just a heads up; we have 2 old wooden sideboards where the doors close with keys.
One in storage and one in the rental with us - but the keys went missing on moving day! They are probably in the drawers of the one in storage but we didn't realise at first and they would charge us £40 just to have a look. Totally fair enough but we decided not to bother, but it does mean we've got one here in the rental that we can't actually use because it was locked for moving safely.
It's those little glitches...
We are looking forward to reuniting keys and sideboards. However, they might have gone missing altogether in which case we've got 2 permanently unusable sideboards...😂