House removals with full pack - what’s included?

[MagpiePi]

I’m moving house with a full pack service soon and wondering how far they go.
Do they take down curtains and ceiling light shades and disconnect the washing machine? Stuff like that.

Ours did BUT they did not drain the washing machine which caused some issues - so recommend you drain it fully yourself.

Ceiling light shades yes to the extent they are removable. Any part of a light fitting that is wired in will stay.

Similarly curtains will get unhooked and come with, but they won’t start unscrewing roller blind brackets (or curtain poles).

in short anything that is fixed to the house stays, anything easily detachable comes with. They are like locusts and pack anything not nailed down. Make sure you keep a box of anything you will want asap in the new place separate (bedding, washpack, cleaning materials, phone charger etc) so it’s not packed in with other stuff.

Thanks!
I hadn’t thought about draining the washing machine.

Does it cost a lot more to have people packing?

In my experience, it doesn’t cost loads more (it’s all relative) as their removal job is harder if not packed by them. And almost regardless of cost, worth every single penny!

Remember to separate things that belong to the house before the packing starts so that they don’t pack those too. The thermostat box for our boiler in the house we were leaving was a freestanding one that’s not attached to the wall and they packed it. We had to open every single box to find it and then give it to the new owners!

They literally pack as presented. So I would recommend getting organised.
If you've left your wellies/slippers by the backdoor in say your kitchen, they may well be in a box with your saucepans or airfryer, but the box will probably be labelled kitchen pans.

Roll forward to moving in day or in your new house and you want/need your wellies/slippers....good luck finding them.

Maybe above isn't the best example but after 11 house moves with the packing service I highly recommend a big organisation of drawers/cupboards and rooms. So items are in a box labelled to the room you would expect to find it. They do label boxes but not with EVERY single item.

Any items you don't want packed ideally need to be completely separated because a team come in and pack on auto pilot, they pack fast and well. Things like hoover/cleaning items you may need for arrival at your new property, bedding/air bed overnight bag,car keys, handbag,shoes, mugs and kettle (although they will ask about kettle cos they'll want a cuppa or 2) ideally need to be put in an out of bounds area. I would typically use the car or one of the kids bedroom - having already moved one kids stuff out into thier brother or sisters room.

Empty bins, dishwasher etc or else it gets packed with whatever is inside.

To speed up we would unwire/disconnect any items connected up (not much these days) but back in the day we would disconnect sound bar from TV/sky box etc. And tape remotes to the TV or whatever. One move we think we threw out a remote in error with the packing paper whilst unpacking.

We sometimes would disassemble some furniture (although when you have your survey you can discuss this) Typically this would be beds and just sleep on our mattress on the floor. Also, play equipment in the garden we would disassemble because typically the garden and out buildings are last to be packed in the van and this time of year it gets dark 4pm onwards. I always used takeaway containers or ziplock freezer bags for any screws/bolts/Alan keys and label clearly with a sharpie and again tape it to the item disassembled so I knew exactly what I was looking for the other end. They will disassembled for you but we would sometimes do it if we were moving several hours away, to help speed up packing so we could head off asap.
They wont pack chemicals, paint or flammable, but they'll explain this in your remove survey.

A good packing service is worth its weight in gold. You literally hand them the keys and get out of the way.

Ours would never take open bottles or cans - so we did the fridge and freezer as well as cans of paint or whatever in the garage that were coming with us.

You very clearly need to label stuff that is staying, and they should make you keep a pile of important docs such as anything you need for the house sale and passports/birth certs.

Thanks, this is all such good information.

On cost: We found that our home insurance covered us for any breakages IF we had used professional packers. So that helped justify the cost. (In the end we just had one bowl break in a box I packed myself…)

And we also found it wasn’t that much extra once already paying for removals.

I think removals companies prefer you to get the whole service as it’s much easier for them to know they are packing rather than turn up and potentially have to deal with someone who hasn’t fully packed yet or whose boxes are overfilled or falling apart etc. Hence perhaps not charging that much extra for the packing service.

What about say clothes? Do you take every thing our if the chest if drawers first?

We used them for an overseas move. It was required due to customs and insurance or whatever.

I agree they are like locusts! They will pack everything in sight - but it is amazing.

I’d advise organising your stuff first. Probably less of an issue if you’re just moving down the road, but our stuff was in transit for months and months and then when we unpacked we found they’d literally packed the kitchen bin with bin bag still inside (thankfully was nothing too gross)

I put everything that wasn’t to be packed by them in one room and put a sign on the door not to go in. Some furniture was going to charity shop/skip etc and we obviously needed clothes and belongings for traveling. Make sure you have any important things like passports and valuables kept separate and if you’re going to need stuff on the first night maybe keep them separate too.

I think for clothes they just took the drawers out with the clothes in.

Ours unpacked for us too at the other end!

Ours did everything, including disassembling wardrobes. They've seen a million ikea pax! I think knickers stayed in drawers, they just wrapped it in clingfilm to keep the drawers shut. They packed the whole 2 bed flat in 45 mins, but then it took them a bit longer to get it onto the van. Have a think about how to get big items out of the house. Ours were strong, but the corner to the front door stumped them until I told them it was a straight line through the back and that's how we"d got everything in originally.

I’ve already got some things in boxes as it seemed daft to empty out a built in wardrobe, sort through and then put everything back.
It does make you realise how much ‘stuff’ you have!

No, not much in the big picture of moving, it's really worth it!

Thanks

When they come over to quote you tell them exactly what is going - we didn’t move any white goods or curtains/blinds. We packed an overnight bag each with essentials like chant of clothes, toiletries and medication and put those on our car. And it’s true they will pack everything - that’s vase full of dead flowers? Those too…

Ask the company?

Last time we moved they packed absolutely everything eg wrapped our waste paper bin with the rubbish inside 🤣 we obviously took the bins out but must have forgotten the office one or whatever.

Empty bins, dishwasher etc or else it gets packed with whatever is inside.

YES! We moved internationally during Covid, and while I'd planned to go back, declutter the house, and supervise the move myself, once the lockdown hit, I couldn't, so it was all handled remotely. The packers were very efficient, but we didn't share a language, and where I was living at the time, very rurally, had no phone signal within a mile of the house, so I used to have to hike up to a high cliff about a mile away to talk to the movers.

Which meant that, many months later, when we were unpacking (our boxes were in storage while we house searched), we found that the contents of the bins had travelled over, nicely boxed. Ditto, understandably, all the crap from the bottom of the cutlery drawer, the socks that had fallen down from behind the washing machine etc.

Do they pack/ transport garden plants in their pots/planters?.. talking fairly large shrubs/grasses...

Put everything you don't want packed into the car while you have time to think about it because they move like lightening. And clear the fridge! I spent ages unwinding the wrapping paper from jars containing one gherkin or olive.

Mine are.
A friend said they brought a flat bed truck to transport all her outdoor plants and they had no trouble lifting and moving them

They will basically pack anything but be clear when they come to quote what will and won’t be included, The quote will obviously vary depending on how much you want packed, how tricky it is and how much disassembly/reassembly is required. I remember we had a trampoline to move - they wanted to see what condition it was in when quoting, as rusty trampolines are a nightmare. When they came to pack they brought a guy who was their trampoline specialist 😆

We used a full-pack service once, and it was beyond awful 🤣 we still laugh about it now because it was SO bad! I wish I’d done a live unboxing thread. My personal highlights:

1. Cheese grater in with photo frames, which weren’t wrapped so it ended up being a cheese grater in a box of broken glass.
2. Toiletries from the bathroom packed with a printer as well as food from the kitchen (no logic to this packing as the rooms were two floors apart!)
3. Clothes pulled out of wardrobes and rammed into bags without taking them off hangers or folding them, so they were in a tangled heap
4. They wrapped the sooty log burner tools in WHITE BEDDING (why?!)
5. They brought our wardrobe into our new house and took a chunk out of the ceiling and wall as they carried it up the stairs. They were asked to finish unloading and just leave at that point!

The best surprise of all was that not a single box was labelled with any indication of its contents, which actually became quite a fun game.

My Dad died a week before I moved. I said to the removals men I didn’t even want to think about having to pack - I went out for the day and came back to find everything packed and ready for the next day. They took down wardrobes and beds and put them back together at the other end. Worth every penny.