Ship things or buy in UK?

[Bumblebee]

Hi All, 

I will be moving back to the UK with my two children (4 + 9) once we have citizenship, hopefully that will be completed by the end of the year. In the meantime I'm trying to work out what to bring back etc - I need to change our sleeping arrangements at the moment and wanted to children to share with a bunk bed, so do I buy a nice one and bring it back, or super cheap and leave it here? Will shipping be way more than the cost of buying things again? 

I will be leaving Oz with barely anything, and I will be starting again from scratch when I get back so part of me thinks if I can already have some items to set up with it'd be better, the thought of having to furnish a whole flat and buy everything when I'll have barely any income is daunting. Although money is tight now my feeling is it'll be tighter when I get to UK so maybe paying for things now is better? Or literally save every penny I can and wing it - start afresh when I'm there.  The ultimate fresh start! When I think of everything you accumulate in a lifetime, to replace it is huge! 

As you can see I'm totally clueless and trying not to freak out lol!

I would love to know what you all did, and if I do ship what are the best options - just send a few boxes rather than actually ship stuff??

Thanks so much!

[Amber Snowball]

55 minutes ago, Bumblebee said:

Hi All, 

I will be moving back to the UK with my two children (4 + 9) once we have citizenship, hopefully that will be completed by the end of the year. In the meantime I'm trying to work out what to bring back etc - I need to change our sleeping arrangements at the moment and wanted to children to share with a bunk bed, so do I buy a nice one and bring it back, or super cheap and leave it here? Will shipping be way more than the cost of buying things again? 

I will be leaving Oz with barely anything, and I will be starting again from scratch when I get back so part of me thinks if I can already have some items to set up with it'd be better, the thought of having to furnish a whole flat and buy everything when I'll have barely any income is daunting. Although money is tight now my feeling is it'll be tighter when I get to UK so maybe paying for things now is better? Or literally save every penny I can and wing it - start afresh when I'm there.  The ultimate fresh start! When I think of everything you accumulate in a lifetime, to replace it is huge! 

As you can see I'm totally clueless and trying not to freak out lol!

I would love to know what you all did, and if I do ship what are the best options - just send a few boxes rather than actually ship stuff??

Thanks so much!

Hi, you need a plan as to how you will manage at either end without things I think. It takes at least 9 weeks, usually more for stuff to arrive, so do you do without the bunk bed this end to ship early enough so it is there soon after you arrive, or do you keep it here til the death and have to buy something the other end any way to budge through until the good bed arrives? Which you might need to do anyway as shipments get delayed all the time.

This is how I’m approaching the task anyway. I move in a couple of months and to be honest I am culling hard! If it has no sentimental value or is something I’m going to need straight away or is not really top quality uber expensive to replace, it’s getting ejected this end. I’m planning on shipping light! 

If it was me I’d buy cheap here, ditch it and buy the best you can when you get back to the UK.

Good luck!

[ali]

Any chance of renting fully or part furnished initially?

Have a look on line at Ikea or Argos - it'll give you some idea of what you would need to spend and then you can work out if it's worth shipping or starting a fresh.

 

[Marisawright]

You're right, it's not just the cost of buying everything from scratch when you arrive, it's the amount of time it takes.   I felt like I spent weeks shopping!  It wasn't the furniture that was the issue, really, it was all the small stuff - traipsing round the shops filling trolley after trolley with pots, pans, kitchen utensils, crockery, cutlery, towels, doonas, sheets, toaster, scales....it was all the little stuff that took ages.  Also because I was trying to do it all quickly, I had to abandon my usual  careful shopping and just buy the first halfway suitable stuff I could find. 

So, I would certainly be worth shipping all the bits and pieces you already own, unless they're in a dreadful state.  You could ship a few boxes (we used Seven Seas), but I'd recommend considering a Movecube.   If you think about how much clothing, toys and other stuff you've got, and how much you can fit in your luggage, you might find you'll need it anyway.  

However, I certainly wouldn't be buying any furniture or other big items specially to ship them.  They're not going to be cheaper in Australia than the UK, and once you add the cost of shipping them, you'll be paying way over the odds.  Save your money instead. If you're not good at saving, put it in a special account.

Amber makes a good point about the delay in shipping - but unless you have family to stay with, you're going to have to book a holiday flat for the first 4 weeks anyway, to give you time to find a rental place.  So that's a month of the waiting time gone.  If you can send the shipment ahead and "camp" in your house for a few weeks, that's often easier than trying to do without at the other end.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2018 by Marisawright

[Guest]

I agree with Marisa about not buying in Aus and shipping. Even if you buy cheap stuff here and ship it, the cost of shipping and the waiting for it to arrive and having to make do in the meantime, it wouldn't be cost effective. UK has lots of good options to buy new if you need them. 

You will have plenty of options in the UK for buying new and second hand. UK charity shops often specialise and have furniture branches around and you can probably pick up a second hand bunk bed cheap enough or hit Ikea or one of the furniture stores and buy new. 

Also things like Gumtree and local buy and sell pages on FB once you are back will be useful.

If you are on a tight budget, I'd work at saving hard this end and researching while here what your buying options new are in the UK and pricing it all up so once you arrive, you can go get shopping if its needed asap. 

Personal effects, kids stuff. kitchen items and utensils, those sorts of things I'd ship. Furniture and white goods I'd leave behind unless you have the budget to ship it and wait for it to arrive and ability to make do with stop gap options in between. No point shipping it if you end up buying new or something the same item once you arrive. 

Edited to add - Re buying bunk beds here. I'd buy second hand frame at least as cheaply as possible and sell it before you go or offer it for free to get rid of it just before you leave. Someone will take it I am sure. 

 

[VERYSTORMY]

We landed back in 2016, with nothing. We had a suitcase each, most of which was filled with things for the dog such as his bed. We did ship personal items with a movecube which arrived months after. Which meant we would have had to buy anyway. 

We discovered there is a brilliant part of gumtree for free stuff, from which we got some amazing bargains - I am sat on a sofa that was brand new designer sofa worth thousands, which a rich guy had made to order and imported, by which time he no longer wanted! 

Charity shops are also a great thing. I have loads of kitchen stuff from them, not only fantastically cheap, but better quality than new stuff. 

It will take a bit of time to fully re-establish yourself, but not that long. I would say we had everything we needed in a month without too much effort. Just don't panic. There will be moments where you can either laugh or cry. We laughed, such as when in the first week, my wife made us some soup for lunch one day only for us to realise we didn't own a spoon. 

[BacktoDemocracy]

On 15/04/2018 at 02:07, Bumblebee said:

Hi All, 

I will be moving back to the UK with my two children (4 + 9) once we have citizenship, hopefully that will be completed by the end of the year. In the meantime I'm trying to work out what to bring back etc - I need to change our sleeping arrangements at the moment and wanted to children to share with a bunk bed, so do I buy a nice one and bring it back, or super cheap and leave it here? Will shipping be way more than the cost of buying things again? 

I will be leaving Oz with barely anything, and I will be starting again from scratch when I get back so part of me thinks if I can already have some items to set up with it'd be better, the thought of having to furnish a whole flat and buy everything when I'll have barely any income is daunting. Although money is tight now my feeling is it'll be tighter when I get to UK so maybe paying for things now is better? Or literally save every penny I can and wing it - start afresh when I'm there.  The ultimate fresh start! When I think of everything you accumulate in a lifetime, to replace it is huge! 

As you can see I'm totally clueless and trying not to freak out lol!

I would love to know what you all did, and if I do ship what are the best options - just send a few boxes rather than actually ship stuff??

Thanks so much!

There are various methods of shipping back, containers or something called ‘movecubes’ you need to find out a rough price for getting stuff that you have back and then add that to the cost of buying in Oz , also as someone said you will have to wait for stuff to get to you in the UK.

I would also go on line and check out prices in the UK, at the moment the high st here is struggling and there are sales all the time and Amazon is undercutting every body, and check out wayfair website for stuff, some is poor quality but they do have decent stuff at fair prices. It will give you some guidance because I always thought furniture was expensive in Oz when I was there

[Quoll]

Don’t forget Freecycle too (a yahoo group) - you might well be able to pick up stuff for nothing, especially if you give a rationale for why it would be useful to you, then you can Freecycle it when you’ve managed to be able to replace it with something you want. 

Personally I’d be travelling light and starting over but that’s just me.

[Home and Happy]

Buy in UK.   You wouldn't want to take that Aussie stuff back here.  It looks weird and all wrong...like 20 years out of date but like nothing anyone here has ever seen before.

[NicF]

3 hours ago, Home and Happy said:

Buy in UK.   You wouldn't want to take that Aussie stuff back here.  It looks weird and all wrong...like 20 years out of date but like nothing anyone here has ever seen before.

Sure,y that depends on what you buy.  IKEA stuff is the same world over so no reason that would look weird and wrong.  The furniture in my family room is all stuff we bought here in Australia but was all made in the UK so I imagine would work perfectly well in a UK house as well as an Australian one.  I can’t say I’m particularly familiar with the Aussie stuff you are talking about either but I tend to buy furniture I love and I don’t stop loving it just because it’s in a different country.  Not sure it’s worth the OP buying bunk beds and shipping though, regardless of what they look like.

[ali]

4 hours ago, Home and Happy said:

Buy in UK.   You wouldn't want to take that Aussie stuff back here.  It looks weird and all wrong...like 20 years out of date but like nothing anyone here has ever seen before.

I'm hoping the OP will take this comment with a pinch of salt because it's absurd.

To the OP - agree with NicF - things will be very similar that you buy in the UK, but there may be pieces of furniture you love.  If I were moving back - top of my list would be our dining table as we'd had it made and I love it, some things I love and probably just wouldn't bit.  I agree - look at bunk beds in the UK.

[suesmalls]

I think the furniture in England is more expensive that Australia, consideration needs to be given to the low wages in England.  So it's not just a straight conversion, it's also the % of your English wages furniture will cost.  Go and various website in UK and do the comparison - wayfair does sell cheap but not everything on their website is cheap.

We brought the majority of our Australia furniture, besides the big lounges, and very glad we did.  I still had to spend thousands of pounds buying small bits and the time it's taken is crazy.  Shopping malls and commercial centres are not like Australia and the parking and busy roads make getting around slower and more frustrating.

If you can afford to bring sentimental pieces of furniture then do so - you'll always be happy looking at sentimental pieces of furniture and telling others how you got it etc.  Bit of a talking point I guess.  Obviously money may be the deciding factor, whether you can afford the shipping or not. 

[Marisawright]

3 hours ago, suesmalls said:

We brought the majority of our Australia furniture, besides the big lounges, and very glad we did.  I still had to spend thousands of pounds buying small bits and the time it's taken is crazy.  Shopping malls and commercial centres are not like Australia and the parking and busy roads make getting around slower and more frustrating.

That's what I found, too.  I'm not sure stuff was more expensive in the UK, however because I was out of touch with the brands, and living in a new area, I didn't know where to find the cheaper stuff.  And as you say, I didn't have time to go looking.  I know I could have found better bargains with more time.  

Also, of course, you forget how long it took you to build up your collection of exactly the right pots, pans, tea towels, whatever.  When you get to a new country, you can't take your time to replace them all, so you end up with a collection of "it'll do" instead.

[suesmalls]

You're right about not knowing the area and trying to find things, I guess it was one way of me finding my way around but I did end up buying things I don't particularly like as 'keep' items and probably will replace so it's an expensive way of setting up again.

I read posts back in Australia about this very topic and when we got our quote it was more economical to get the full container, so we weighed up the costs of the full container v the costs of the items.  I regret some of items we didn't bring and the sentimental value or talking point some items could have brought us. e.g. we just realized we didn't bring our esky.  Would have been perfect for the bbq and another talking point - the esky has been on many a trip and bbq.

Small things but that's what I guess building memories is about. 

I would definitely recommend bringing what is valuable, irreplaceable or sentimental value if you can afford it.  When my purpose build marri dining table was unpacked I felt I had some connection. Many lovely dinners have taken place at this table and it looks good.

Our Jason leather recliners were big but they've become the perfect chairs in our new house, fortunately, and the cats love dossing on them. Of cause with throw rugs on them.

[MelT]

Hi,

I am in in the process of organising quotes for our move in August... Had various feedback regarding OSS Worldwide Movers which have not been so good.

Has anyone used Chess Movers, if so would you recommend them? Or can you recommend another company?

Thank you :)

[Amber Snowball]

1 hour ago, MelT said:

Hi,

I am in in the process of organising quotes for our move in August... Had various feedback regarding OSS Worldwide Movers which have not been so good.

Has anyone used Chess Movers, if so would you recommend them? Or can you recommend another company?

Thank you

Hi, I was going to use Chess, from Melbourne, as they were responsive and helpful. I provided an online inventory with an estimate of boxes and the quote was 12m3 about $4100. More than I wanted to spend but it was pretty average compared to others. Person came out to sight the load and it jumped to 16m3 for $5500. Too much. So I got most of the furniture removed and it only went down to 14m3.

Thought “stuff it”. I am now not moving the furniture and I am struggling to fill a large movecube at 7m3. Not sure how random their quoting is but I cannot fathom it.

Anyway, Chess were pleasant and helpful. All companies are about the $350 per m3 as far as I can tell. Chess weren’t pushy at all. If I wanted to use a shipper I would be using them to be honest.

[rammygirl]

Professional packers , especially for international moves, put less in each box (especially breakables) and pad it out with packing paper.  When we opened some boxes the were half empty!  I packed for my sons move cube and got more in even with plenty of padding where needed, I used linen and cushions to pad and wrap fragile items and the small cube was tightly packed.  Better to pack tight as nothing can move about in the cube or fall over.

He didn’t want to ship a lot but the cost of shipping was much less than the items were worth.....he did have several guitars!

 

 

[Melbpom]

On ‎27‎/‎05‎/‎2018 at 09:22, Marisawright said:

That's what I found, too.  I'm not sure stuff was more expensive in the UK, however because I was out of touch with the brands, and living in a new area, I didn't know where to find the cheaper stuff.  And as you say, I didn't have time to go looking.  I know I could have found better bargains with more time.  

Also, of course, you forget how long it took you to build up your collection of exactly the right pots, pans, tea towels, whatever.  When you get to a new country, you can't take your time to replace them all, so you end up with a collection of "it'll do" instead.

It's not only the time to buy new stuff, it's the time it takes to sell, sort, donate or give stuff away. I totally under estimated the final pack and clean of the rental house. Final week was extremely stressful (lost a few kilos in process). I wish I'd taken more back because shipping was reasonable and it's nice opening boxes to find familiar items. I used Grace who were the cheapest at $4K for a shared container (just over half full) from Melbourne to Midlands. Lleyton Percival were good too for that last minute insurance cover in a panic.

[Amber Snowball]

5 hours ago, Melbpom said:

It's not only the time to buy new stuff, it's the time it takes to sell, sort, donate or give stuff away. I totally under estimated the final pack and clean of the rental house. Final week was extremely stressful (lost a few kilos in process). I wish I'd taken more back because shipping was reasonable and it's nice opening boxes to find familiar items. I used Grace who were the cheapest at $4K for a shared container (just over half full) from Melbourne to Midlands. Lleyton Percival were good too for that last minute insurance cover in a panic.

Getting rid of things when you aren’t in the suburbs is hard. I have essentially fully stocked the local charity shop! I tried advertising a couple of things but no takers out here, so I have a house clearance chap coming to take what is left.

 I have planned a staggered move out. My mum flies today, my son moves to his rental on Friday, I move to a holiday let with the cat on Saturday, Movecube on Monday, house clearance Tuesday, house settles on 25th, me and the cat fly 28th!

I have decided to “ look forward to buying new things!”