Category:Planning
Most moves go wrong in the same three places, and all three are decided weeks before the truck arrives. This is the checklist we give customers at the survey, counted backwards from moving day.
Eight weeks out
This is the only point at which you have enough time to change your mind about anything.
- Book the survey. A quote given over the phone is a guess; a quote given after somebody has seen your stairwell is a price.
- Decide what is not coming. Every box you do not move is money you do not spend, and the sorting is easier now than it will be in a fortnight.
- Check the lease or the sale timeline, and write down the two dates that actually constrain you: the day you lose access to the old place, and the day you gain it to the new one.
If those two dates do not overlap, you need storage, and storage is far cheaper booked now than arranged in a panic.
Four weeks out
- Confirm the move date in writing and get the crew size on the paperwork.
- Arrange parking. In a city this is a permit and it takes time.
- Book the elevator, if there is one. Building managers are not obliged to be helpful at short notice.
- Start the paperwork: utilities, mail redirection, schools, insurance, the vet, the bank.
Two weeks out
- Begin packing the rooms you do not live in — the loft, the spare room, the garage.
- Use up the freezer. Nothing travels worse than frozen food.
- Order any specialist materials you need: wardrobe cartons, mirror boxes, mattress bags.
The week of
Pack a priority box and put it in the car, not the truck. Kettle, mugs, tea, chargers, medication, toiletries, a towel each, and the tools to rebuild a bed. It is the single change that most improves the first night.
- Confirm the arrival window with the crew lead.
- Photograph the back of the television and anything else with more than three cables.
- Defrost the fridge at least 24 hours before, and leave the door ajar.
- Take meter readings at both properties.
Moving day
Be there at the start and at the end, and delegate the middle. Walk the crew through the house before they touch anything: point out what is fragile, what is not moving, and what should go on the truck last. Then get out of the way — the loading order is a craft, and a good crew loses time explaining it.
At the far end, check the inventory before you sign it. That signature is the document, and once it is on paper the conversation about a scratched sideboard becomes much harder.
