Moving Home

When it comes to moving home, planning for the day can be a stressful experience. Between handling the estate agents, solicitors, buyers, sellers and everyone in between before you even get to the moving day.

At Mr Shifter Removals London, we have over 35 years’ experience available to you to help with all your removals service needs, and will do our best to take some of the pressure out of moving house.

In London, as a community we are working longer hours, commuting over longer distances, and socialising for longer than we ever have. So making time to cram all of that into a week and still leaving some time left over to pack for your move can feel like a very steep mountain to climb.

Especially if you know where to begin! To help prepare for your move, we have put together some of our top tips to navigate a clearer path to moving day!

Declutter the Loft

The first stop to preparing for your moving day is to dispose or donate anything that you do not necessarily need in your new home. The prime culprit for many of us is the loft!

Chances are that 70% of your belongings that are in your loft have been up for well over a year, and 90% of that will likely remain up there for the next 5 years if you were not moving home! So, be ruthless, clear down everything from the loft and be methodical in your approach.

Do you need it? Will you use it?

Most local councils will offer a free drop off to a local tip or recycling centre as long as you go with proof of address, So you have a cost free way of clearing your unwanted goods.

With whatever is left get it boxed and labelled and ready to be moved.

Weed out the Clutter

Your Garden is another offender in areas where the majority of us find a way to hoard our goods without a second thought, If you are 6-8 weeks away from your moving date you can start to prepare your garden furniture. Get any Patio furniture or Kids Climbing frames etc. dismantled and ready to be moved.

You can also start to box up all your tools and content in your shed ready to be moved, again when it comes to the content of your sheds and greenhouses, be ruthless don’t take what you will not use or do not need.

We would highly recommend looking at hire crates to store and transport your tools as they are built more ruggedly than most cardboard boxes and can handle the weight of the tools a lot more efficiently.

Get your Winter/Summer Wardrobe ready!

As long as you have an idea of what time of year you are moving, you will usually have 6-8 weeks notice before your moving date, you can start to prepare your wardrobe accordingly and get some of your belongings from your Chest of Drawers packed up along the way. For instance, if you are moving in Summer, you are not likely going to need your Witner coats and heavy knit jumpers, These can all be boxed and ready to be moved well in advance of your moving date.

When you start to hit the 7 day countdown, you can start to thin down your wardrobe further and pack all but a weeks’ worth of clothes ready, that way the night before your move you have farless to pack and have more time to enjoy your night.

As the moving day approaches you can apply this to the rest of your home as well, start to considering packing up a lot of your living essentials you might not necessarily need to hand, start to thin down the content of your kitchen allowing 1 plate, 1 cup and 1 dish per person. You can keep these clean regularly and will have farless to pack at the end.

Be Truthful

We can often be our own worst enemy when it comes to packing and often taking far longer than a professional would, due to the sentiment and personal value we place on items. When it comes to organising how you are going to pack ,you need to be honest with yourself;

When Did I last use it? Do we Need it? How often will we Use it?

Items found in the loft, under the stairs and at the back of cupboards will have been there for years and will likely still be there for years to come in the new house as well. Moving house is a great opportunity to do some serious decluttering and remove these unneeded items.

Plan your Rooms

This holds true for both your current house and your new home. Where is everything going to go? Once you start packing, your home will quickly fill up with boxes and they wont disappear over night at the new house either. So, plan where you want all your furniture to go, and where you will keep all your boxes as your process.

Consider dismantling the dining table and laying the table top flat against the wall, this will give you

Choose Good Quality materials for packing

You have spent years investing in your home and it’s content. When it comes to Moving invest in good quality packing and boxing materials. We have a full guide on what materials and boxes to use for every part of your home.

I previously wrote an article about what boxes to use and how to use them.

We would always recommend using good quality double corrugated cardboard boxes from approved suppliers. These are designed for the removals and storage of household goods; the reason for this is, that they are designed to hold their shape and more specifically the weight of what they are being packed with.

They also allows us to stack them higher when we are loading the removals truck, which means we waste less space when organising your truck. Which can reduce complications in the long run. Not to mention reducing the chances of your goods getting damaged in transit because the boxes are not able to be stacked.