A no-stress guide to moving home (part 1)

Congratulations to your dream home! You successfully signed the rental agreement and can’t wait to move in. Halfway down the bottle of Champagne it suddenly dawns on you: How were you thinking of getting all your belongings from your old flat, including 80 pairs of shoes, 20 stuffed bears and 5 batman suits, into your new flat in under a year? Unless your fireplace is connected to the Floo Network, chances are it might take a tad longer than you expected… And where to start? Quite by chance, you come across our blog post – what a happy coincidence – and immediately feel less stressed.

Plan ahead 

If you don’t want to end up running around like a headless chicken, and your pmc doesn’t offer you a tenant management system to guide you through the process, you should definitely start planning the moment you signed the new agreement and ended your current tenancy. A to-do list will help you to really stick to your plans and prevent you from forgetting anything important.

Ask for help 

Most people don’t want to spend an arm and a leg when they move, so they recruit their family and friends and condemn them to a day of putting their backs out. If you want to go down that path, make sure to ask everyone early on. (The sooner you tell them, the smaller the chance will be that someone finds an excuse to chicken out.) Once you know how many people are coming to help, you could start preparing food and buying drinks for the day. (Small warning: If you do a “celery sticks with a yoghurt dip and bring your own drinks” kind of thing, chances are you might be a few friends short when the big day comes.) Should one of your friends accidentally damage something while they’re manoeuvering their way around piles of precariously stacked boxes while carrying your fencing equipment and your extra large ironing board, there’s no need to worry! Their personal liability insurance is responsible for covering the costs.

If, on the other hand, you are willing to pay someone to do the job and decide to hire professionals, they might even help you pack and unpack your belongings and to dismantle and reassemble all your furniture! As far as liability is concerned, you need to check with the company first and find out exactly what and how high the amount is that they are willing to cover if anything gets damaged. Ask your pmc for contractors; they might have experience with a couple of companies and can easily look them up for you in their real estate management system.

Ah, one more thing: The removals company usually provides a van, your friends probably won’t, so don’t forget to hire one in due time!

Friends you didn’t know you had

Your best friend when you’re moving is always a cardboard box. You can either buy or rent new ones at a shop or online (rather pricey, though), or get used ones on social media (they tend to be cheaper). Other must-haves are bubble wrap or old newspapers to carefully wrap your grandma’s china in and Sellotape to seal the cardboard boxes. If you want to avoid rummaging around every single box just to find a clean pair of socks or pants every morning, you could get markers to label each box.

Declutter the place

Now’s the perfect time to finally get rid of your conker collection and the vase you wished your in-laws had never bought you for Christmas. Take whatever you don’t need anymore to a charity shop (maybe not the conkers) or sell things online (who knows, someone’s dream of buying a second-hand conker collection may finally come true).

Moving home can be stressful. Moving office is, too. We are currently carrying boxes and driving vans ourselves. This blog post is to be continued; as soon as the coffee machine is up and running, we’ll be back. Until then: Hang in there!