Friday 12 July 2013

Getting ready for your house move (5 more tips)

I have to tell you that I’m not enjoying this moving house lark.  In my imagination it was all to go very smoothly and be a lot of fun, sadly that has not been my experience but you may be far luckier than us so don’t despair.

Following on from the post I wrote a few weeks back about things to think through for your house move, I now share my next five tips on getting ready for your move and making things go as smoothly as possible -

De-clutter your belongings
I pride myself on being someone who de-clutters regularly.  Most of my friends have random baby clothes and equipment sat in their loft and I’m pleased to say mine have always gone within about 3 months of them not being used anymore. I really can’t stand mess but I have discovered that even someone like me has far too much when it comes to moving house. I managed to condense my wardrobe by at least half and there is plenty you can do with your old clothes, give them to a charity shop, a local family in need or our local food bank takes clothes too. Or it might be that you need to make some extra pennies and you can sell your old clothes online.

Mail redirection
It is only £50 to redirect your post with Royal Mail for a whole year, this really surprised me and struck me as very good value. It would have been easy to assume I am super organised and that I only need six months but then I might miss out on the odd random Christmas car or the pension update that only comes out once a year.

Change of address notifications
I used word and a few images of our new house and area (luckily it is very beautiful) to make a change of address announcement. I then sent this via Facebook, email and snail mail to family and friends and it hardly cost a penny.

Make sure that you don’t start to change your address with all your service providers too soon as you may end up like me, having to call them all again and amend the move date. Wait until you exchange contracts and have a firm move date to get this all sorted, even though it might be tempting to do it early.
I can't wait to move in and again sit on those benches and relax in the sun!

Collect packing materials
You want to ensure that you have all your valuables really well packed and this means loads of newspaper (or packing paper), bubble wrap and boxes. Yes you can go out and buy yourself a complete move pack but why spend £50 when you don’t need to? I found the DIY stores like Homebase and B&Q to be really great for getting large, sturdy boxes and dh was able to collect lots of metro papers from his train travels into London each day. Or it might be that all this manual labour is not your bag and you can find out how much your removal company charges to pack it all for you.

Investigate removal companies thoroughly
Talk to local friends and family to see which removal company they used. We chose our company on the basis of two independent recommendations for friends and then when the owner came to price up our job he was friendly, knowledgeable and wanted to make sure I understood all I needed to about our move job. Don’t just go on price, the cheapest is often not the best option. Also, make sure you find out if they offer insurance for your belongings or if not then it will just be liability to cover them on a like for like basis and you need to check with your contents insurers that you are covered adequately.

I'm due to move in just a couple of weeks now and I have to be honest and say I can not wait, I just pray all goes well with our house sale this time.


-----------------------------------------------------------------
If you like what you have read and want to stay up-to-date then subscribe by email for free and receive blog posts directly to your in-box - just click the link Subscribe to Mummy From The Heart... by Email or perhaps you like to keep all your blog reading in one place, if that is the case you can follow me on BlogLovin too!Follow on Bloglovin
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...