practicalities of moving- voice of experiance needed please

we have validated our visa and the house is on the market.

I am looking for quotes to move personal effects and crockery, toys etc. We have decided not to ship furniture but to sell this as close to the completion date of house sale as possible. There will obviously be a period of time when we have sold all our furniture (hopefully) and personal effects are boxed ready to be shipped.

In the small amount of time between when this happens and the flights take off what did you do? did you lodge with friends, borrow from friends/family, go into short term rented accom?

all these things have crossed my mind so any helpful advise from someone that has experianced this issue would be very helpful with pros and cons/pitfalls etc.

also i currently work 3 days a week when should i pack in work to devote my life to fulltime removal/emigration administrator?? am finding the 4 days i have free are becoming very full already is this likely to get worse??? sorry for the divvy questions ...thanks....:confused:

Hi and welcome to the forum and hey there are no divvy questions. In regards to crockery unless it's sentimental I wouldn't bother as if you get a part container it usually takes a lot longer for your items to arrive and you will end up having to buy again when you are here.

Furniture we sold all ours before we came, we sold a lot prior and just kept basics like sofa, beds and fridge, we then got a 2nd hand dealer to take these off us the day before we moved out. We then had 3 days with family before we left.

thanks..the thought off a second hand dealer never crossed my mind..just goes to show it was worth asking the question.

HI we decided to bring everything with us and had a 20ft container we both finished work the week before and it took 3 days for the packers to come in and pack everything, they left our bed a sofa and TV until the last day when the container was to be loaded. this was the Wed and our house was to be sold on the Thurs We stayed 2 nights with my Sister then flew to Aus on the Sat It was a risk leaving so soon after the sale of the house but it all went well and we transfered the money to Aus once we arrived.

We stayed with our Daughter for 2wks then went into Furnished Appartment until we found a Rental Our container was a bit longer than we were told so we managed to borrow mattresses etc and went to Op shop for cups cutlery etc.We had to make the decision to rough it in Uk while our stuff was in transit or rough it in Aus before it arrived but we just wanted to get here mind we didn't have kids to worry about

I wouldn't bother bringing Crockery etc as its very cheap to buy but sheets and towels etc are more expensive so i would recomend bringing them I think you can get a Small Package Container but its good to shop arround re prices etc and see what is on offer, The way we looked at it was if we were bringing some stuff we might aswell bring it all and I was glad we did as it saved having to shop around for everything Its a hectic time to begin with it takes about 3 mths for everything to work in once our stuff arrived it all seemd to come right.

Hope this is of some help please feel free to contact me if you need further advice only glad to be of help we are in QLD

regards

Evelyn x

We shipped our stuff a few days before i flew out, and hubby stayed with his mum for a few weeks before following me.

But we had family to stay with (and i had most of a house full of stuff shoved in boxes under mum & dad's house....). Family and friends will want to see you anyway, so it can work well if they've got space to put you up

We shipped a 20ft container FULL of stuff, but we have a lot of furniture and collectible stuff (not to mention the 8 million guitars), and it was 9 weeks door to door. (arrived the week before xmas!)

I finished work (full time) on the Friday, Satchdog flew out on the Monday and the movers came on the Wednesday. With the benefit of hindsight, this was much to exhausting. We should have sent Satch a week earlier, and I should have taken an extra week off. (and we don't have kids).

But - if you're not shipping furniture and outside stuff then you won't be spending what feels like months and months scrubbing and 'jeyesing' the life out of everything then it would be fine

You can rent furniture/house packs from specialist companies until your stuff arrives if you do want to ship your stuff

We're 29 days from going now, and its a lot of 'on the bus/off the bus' type work, so if you are organised tbh you could quite easily work and do it imho (I can't because I'm a teacher and we can only resign at certain times of year, so it was either go at Christmas (which we didn't want) or wait a few weeks after, which we decided to do). A week or so at the end to tie up loose ends might be needed, but then again it depends if you have a partner who is chipping in or not as well I guess. We have a big whiteboard with everything listed on it (told you I was a teacher lol) - http://sendusdownunder.com/2012/01/teachers-organised/ - and are ticking things off (or adding them as we remember them!) as we go.

We are taking about 200 cubic foot of stuff, all sentimental stuff, some of it the odd item of furniture (eg an old blanket box), so are shipping that, and then getting rid of everything else - beds/normal furniture/white goods and so on. One of the main reason for only shipping the bare min. for us is because it all has to go into storage for 6-12 months when it gets there as we are taking off around Oz in a camper until we get bored, so that affects the pricing on things for us in a big way.

Our first big Ebay session just ended this weeked, that took out a load of my husbands larger work stuff (eg mannequins/filing cabinets etc) and the sofas/dining table and spare double bed, as well as some bits and bobs like the second vacuum cleaner. That lot will be picked up this week, leaving us with an armchair, coffee table, tv, our bed, white goods and loads of bits and pieces still.

We have a big 4x4, but as the MOT runs out the 2nd Feb it has to go before then, so everything needs taking the to tip before then (our other car is a tiny KA and will be sold the week before we leave).

Our landlord knows a bloke who might want some of the white goods and stuff, so he is going to come round at some point and offer us 2p for it all, the coffee table is wrecked so will go to the tip, our shippers come on 6th Feb, so hopefully after 6th we will just have a pretty empty house with just the bed in it. We'll arrange for the council to come pick the bed up the Sat. before we leave (they do big item collections on Sats only), and stay that weekend with my brother who lives in the next town over, get the train back to the house on the Monday to check out with the landlord, and then get the taxi down to Heathrow that afternoon.

Its a bit of a tetris game, just organising the little cubes in the right place so it all works out at the right time, but a lot of the time we are sitting around twiddling our thumbs (well, I am - hubby is still making costumes for people lol).

Ditto to the linen and towels

We brought more or less everything - we decided we were not bringing our sofas so they went to a charity it cost 20 quid for them to collect it and it was going to a person recently housed who had been homeless.

My Dad was getting rid of his furniture and putting personal affects into storage to come in our container so we used his sofas and brought them with us to use until we bought a house and decided on what we needed.

I did everything in the 5 weeks it took from selling the house to a cash buyer out of the blue to the container leaving on the Thursday and us flying on the Friday.

I finished work on the Tuesday, packers came Wed and Thursday, container left about 4pm on the Thursday.

We did a couple of car boots, freecycled some things and let my Childminders help themselves to what was left of toys and furniture we were not taking ( a huge sideboard hubby had made and a tv cabinet which we did not think would go through customs) and gave what was left to charity.

We were very lucky. . . .

We stayed with my brother in UK for one night before we flew and then with my sister for 6 weeks which is how long it took the container to arrive. We then squatted in a house she had bought to renovate while she and her hubby decided what they were doing with it.

I probably brought too many clothes with me especially winter clothes, I have not worn one of my coats since we got here, well maybe a rain coat once. I am just about to have a ruthless cull of my clothes, fashion changes and a different way of life mean I don't wear my 'office' clothes or most of my formal clothes, I have jackets and tailored trousers that I used to wear all the time for work but even though my job is similar I wear much more relaxed clothes all year round.

I did not bring any of my basic crockery, after 20 years of marriage nothing matched, I just brought family heirlooms (a couple of plates and glasses LOL) We bought new when we needed it.

Wardrobes are not usually needed here as most houses have built in - although we did bring one large wardrobe which we used in the first house we were in as it was an old weather board with no built in wardrobe !!! BUT it is now in garage being used by hubby for tools etc

The time will fly by, you have a deadline so it has to get done, very strange packing your whole life up in a container and not seeing it for at least 6 weeks

Good luck and keep asking the Divvy questions you know someone else is wanting to know it too:biggrin:

I am just finalising dates at the moment. I have rented a holiday home next to our house for 1 week before we go. We will have this from the 17th and will take to it only the things we intend to fly with. It is fully serviced with linen etc. Packers will come in on the 19th and will be either 2 or 3 days. My son will finish school on the 23rd March and we will fly on 25th. As ours is company sponsored we will have 8 weeks in temporary accommodation provided for us by which time the goods should have arrived.

It's never too early to pack items not going to be used and de-clutter. We probably started 3 months before leaving and I made myself de-clutter every night, no matter how small the task. I took 2 weeks off before leaving but I was also was prepping the house for rent. We stayed with friends for 2 weeks too.

Oh, and don't count on your goods arriving in 8 weeks, it's a bit hit and miss. I'm now week 12 and still waiting :eek:

You are only realistically going to get your stuff in 8 weeks if you send your own container. If you send just personal effects on a groupage (shared container) service you can expect 12 - 16 weeks.

I left work on the Wednesday; had movers packers in on Thursday; spent the evening out with friends and the night at the Edinburgh Airport Hilton Hotel. I flew out on the Friday morning. I had spent some time for the previous fortnight throwing stuff out, taking broken electrical goods to my nearest electrical shop for disposal (under the WEEE directive) and selling records, CDs, books and the like. I also had my whisky collected for sale at an auction (400 bottles of the stuff). I sort of regret some of the stuff I sold and threw out but it can’t be undone.

I would recommend taking furniture as the price for replacement is far higher than the cost of shipping. I mean *far* higher. It’s easier to ship and then sort in Australia when you have a clear idea of what you need and where you are living rather than guess in advance. And for most things, the price for replacement is more than you’d think.

Professional movers are great as they don’t have sentimental attachment to anything. This means they work quickly and practically. I would keep working as late as you can because otherwise you just go mad doing pointless busywork and getting in everyone’s way. It will all come together at the end because it has to – even if you wend up adding a few boxes of rubbish to a container.

Oh, and if you have untaken annual leave at work, ask whether you can take it after you’ve gone. That way you can still get another wee or two’s pay. Where I worked, they would either pay you for untaken leave at a rate of 7 days’ leave = 1 week’s pay, or you take it as actual days where 5 days’ leave = 1 week’s pay. It was a no-brainer but not something that everyone thinks of.