Buying your home for the first time is a significant milestone. It’s exciting and opens up a whole new set of responsibilities to prepare for, including moving house. It’s something you may have done before, but the experience is still different when you’re moving to your own home.
Even if you’re doing it for the nth time, it also pays to be prepared before a house move. Even seasoned house movers know that they can’t just wing it when it comes to moving house. They must be as prepared as possible to ensure that the move goes on without a hitch.
For those buying their first home or those who have moved before but want to learn some new techniques, we’ve put up a list of our top pointers for moving houses:
1.Make a List of Your Top Priorities
List down the furniture and essential pieces of your home that need to be prioritised during the move. Include all beds, living room couch, closet, and the majority of your cooking utensils, cookware, and crockery may also be a priority. If you need it right away, prioritize them on your moving list, so you know what’s most essential on the day of your move.
You can’t treat all of your things the same way. While you may be able to spend a few days without a sentimental item, a favourite pillow, old records in the attic, or old books on your bookshelf, you won’t be able to do so with other things.
2.Create a Checklist
When relocating, it may be challenging to know where to begin packing, so one of the first things on your mind is making a checklist or a plan of action. You can research on the internet for a template for house moving, so you can start getting organised before buying anything, packing anything, or moving stuff around.
Making a list of all the rooms in your house, as well as areas like garages, lofts, basements, and gardens, can help you figure out what you need to pack. You may write down which things or locations still need to be packed and then check each room when completed.
3.Start from the Top Floors
Start with all your room upstairs so you can maximise tasks that involve climbing up and down the stairs. If you made a list of moving tasks, itemise everything from the upper floors so you’ll only climb up and down the stairs when needed. That alone can make you feel tired even before completing tasks on the lower floors.
Start by locating a suitable location to store the storage boxes that won’t be unpacked right away. It’s a good idea to work your way from the top down through your house’s floors. Unloading your belongings at your new house follows the same approach.
4.Label Your Packages
Nothing is more frustrating than digging through containers, boxes, and bags of your belongings in search of something, particularly after a possibly lengthy and challenging relocation. Label all storage boxes, containers, and whatnot with the room they came from and a brief description of what’s inside.
Label items like appliance cables by putting masking or packing tape over them, and with a permanent marker, label what they’re for, where they’re from in the old house, and their location in the new house. Keep all things from the same room together, so movers would identify them and move them together as well.
5.Ensure All Furniture Are Labelled
If you don’t have the original instructions for your furniture, assembling it back together may be difficult. Mark everything, from the biggest components to the tiniest screws, and if you need to, create step-by-step guides, or snap pictures of each step to make it easier to put back.
Keep all fittings, screws, and the like in small bags, separated per furniture piece it belonged to. In addition, use bubble wraps, cardboard, or several newspapers to wrap legs of chairs, couches, beds, and the like, to avoid any damage to the furniture and walls when moving.
6.Ensure You Have Essential Supplies for the Move
If you have listed down all the things you would need for a move, you would have included packing items like tape, markers, boxes, bubble wraps and the like. Ensure that you run to the store and get them at least a week or two before your move. Doing it so close to your move would not be wise since the probability of forgetting an item or two is a common thing.
If you don’t have enough time to run to the store or suddenly realize you’re still missing a box in the middle of the night before the movers come, it would be stressful to troubleshoot the situation. Instead, be prepared with a list, buy early, and give yourself time for last-minute runs to make sure you have everything you need for the move.
7.Use Transparent Plastic Boxes for All Your Important Items
Place necessities like toiletries, laptops, mobile devices, chargers, important documents, and the like in transparent plastic boxes to make it easy to locate, among your other things. Prepare at least a day or a couple of day’s worth of spare clothing, a jacket, towel, blanket and few pillows, and some kitchen essentials, so no matter if there’s a delay on the rest of your stuff, you will still be able to function in your new place for a day or two.
8.Since you placed valuable items in these boxes, you need to focus on them during the move. If possible, put them in your own car or luggage, so you have them separate from the rest of your other things.
9.Avoid Packing Heavy Boxes
Using many smaller boxes for things like your books and other heavy goods is the best way to avoid packing large, hefty containers that are prone to breaking and are a pain to carry. If boxes are heavy, mark them as such and place the boxes or containers at the base of any stack to protect lighter, breakable items.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that reading through all of these suggestions may seem tiresome, it pays to be thorough when selecting a conveyancing service. We can vouch for the fact that hiring the finest conveyancer will help your move go more smoothly. That said, make sure to keep this guide in mind as you plan!
Conveyancing Expert is a Manchester-based conveyancing firm providing online conveyancing services. When it comes to your property needs, we’ve got you covered—reach out to us today.