When I was an athlete I moved at least twice a year. Each move was to different temporary housing. Sometimes I would find very short term housing in my summer (London, ON) or winter (Victoria, BC) home and then move again once I was in the city and could look in person. The goal was to find furnished rentals but they tend to be more expensive and not affordable for athletes.
My first summer trying out for the national team I lived in an unfurnished two bedroom apartment. Katy had a blow up mattress, I had a futon mattress on the floor and we had one pot that we cooked with. Fun! Tack onto all of it that you never knew if you’d be staying, if you would make the team or be sent home, and it’s no wonder I still have the occasional moving nightmare.
What helps moving stress?
Have a plan.
Have less to pack.
Here’s my plan to get us to the Isle of Man.
April
Surprisingly, I’m not running around like my hair is on fire. Yes, this is a big move and there is much to do but, we already got rid of a lot of stuff. The goal is to keep most of our furniture until mid-May. Here is the plan for April:
- Create master list work lists for cancellation/address change, home repair/maintenance: Chris and I will create a list of a) bills/policies/services that will need to be updated/changed/canceled. We also have a few home repairs to make before renters move in.
- Sell office furniture and computer equipment: fancy desk chair sold quick last week. Chris has listed computer equipment and is patiently negotiating and waiting for offers. UPDATE: computer stuff sold.
- Sell DVD collection: we’re taking a few select titles with us but there isn’t a point in bringing most of them. If we do get a television and DVD player it will be in the UK format that won’t read our North American DVDs. We’ll bring a few of our favourites that we can watch on our laptops.
- Sell nursery furniture:he doesn’t sleep there much anyways and it will give our house guest more room. UPDATE: nursery furniture sold.
May
We won’t know our exact move date until Chris’s work visa comes in (expected at the end of May). For now we are planning on having our condo rented out for June 1st and if we stay past then we will move in with family temporarily.
- Swap Meet: one last Swap Meet to sell more baby items and toys. Most of Henry’s library will come with us along with a few select toys, his stroller, maybe the car seat (need to research if it is okay to use in the UK), his booster seat, Ergo baby carrier and clothes. I am thankful I got off the buy ahead bandwagon and stopped buying on sale items for future use. We just have a small amount of summer stuff for this year, a few winter items that should fit next year and a few items in larger sizes that were gifts. Anything left from the Swap Meet will be donated.
- Furniture: we will start listing our big furniture and office furniture supplies at the beginning of the month with the hopes of securing buyers that will take it the 2nd or 3rd week of the month. All furniture is being sold or given away – we’re not storing it!
- Urban Garage Sale: we’ll be throwing a garage sale type open house to get rid of kitchen items and odds and ends. I’ll be putting a lot of effort into taking photos and describing items and promoting it on Craigslist.
- Final sales: the things I want to hold onto until the bitter end are my Nespresso machine and the Dyson vacuum. They’re in demand items that rarely go on sale. If I price them well I should be able to get a buyer from Craigslist in the few days before we leave. And then it will be take out coffee and bare feet at home until we leave.
- Storage: my mother-in-law has okayed us keeping a few things at her home. At the moment the list includes: a small amount of infant clothing for mythical baby #2, our china, my much loved wine glasses and champagne flutes (too delicate to ship or I would!), Kitchen Aid mixer, Cuisinart and a few kitchen start-up items. Hold me to this list!
What will we do for a bed in the weeks and days before we leave? I’m well versed on being bed less. Borrowed camping mattresses or Aerobeds will do just fine. I slept on an Aerobed for two years while working out three times a day. It may not be fancy but it gets the job done.
Advice? Opinions?
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I’m excited for you! That “mythical baby #2” is what is getting me, too. I set a time limit anyway (40yo) and I’m already 38. I am tired of keeping the stuff, but hope to have a use for it (soon!).
… your car seat should be fine in the UK. We use our car seats when we travel to the UK (from the States) without any problems. It might help to read the car manual and re-read your car seat manual, but I’ve never had a problem.
Thanks, Jackie. And yippee – I kept the manual!
How exciting! :)))
So will you fly to the UK with 3 bags and 2/3 smaller handluggage?
Just found out the company pays for some shipping. We won’t be sending furniture but I’m making a list of items that we use a lot and are expensive to replace/rebuy. No electronics because of the power conversion. Ideally it will be 2-4 boxes that we send ahead.
No advice or opinions, but lots of wishes of luck.
I hope that the visa comes through in plenty of time!
Thanks, Amber. So fun to talk to you last week!
With your change of Address check list make sure you have all the facts. My bank, which is also one of my rrsp providers gratefully took my change of address through their phone service. However, the rrsp address had to be changed separately. That was rather disappointing to find out 8 months later. Assumptions, the killer.
Thanks for the reminder, Wise Older Brother.
Wow, that sounds like a plan!!! What will you do for furniture once you get to IOM? will you be buying or renting furnished? I was talking to hubby the other day and we reckon that should we ever move we could do it with one van load and in half a day now that we have gotten rid of so much, and we are a family of 2 adults and 4 kids!! How times have changed for us, when we moved to our current house it took us 2 whole days and four van loads!!
I too jumped off the buy ahead bandwagon, i now enjoy ‘needing’ something and taking my time to select and purchase items, i like to be ‘current’ and don’t miss the shopping frenzys that i used to do way to often!!
Sharron x
Impressive with 4 kids!
I also like the “needing” something feeling as well. And while there are some great end of season sales, I think I save my money because I buy a lot less, I buy used and I buy what I actually need.
Furniture: we won’t rent something until we are actually living there (will stay in short term furnished accommodation until then). It could be furnished or unfurnished. There is such a small rental market that we want to focus on location and good living space first. If it isn’t furnished I will be patient and buy used stuff. And not a lot of it – we need a lot less furniture now that we have less clothing, only kid’s books, etc.
We just went nearly fully digital with the movies. Amazon and iTunes have most newer movies (I haven’t looked into older ones) and once you purchase them, they are in your account indefinitely – you don’t even have to download them.
Otherwise, except for a few kid’s DVDs and movies we truly love, there was nothing we wanted to keep… we rarely watched them. We are planning on dumping all of those on a portable hard drive if they can be. If not, the kid’s DVDs will be outgrown soon and the truly loved will gradually get replaced by Amazon or iTunes versions because most of movie watching happens while traveling and it is worth it to not have to keep track of DVDs. The purchase of very select movies is subsidized by selling the old, not-nearly-select-enough DVD collection Craigslist.
We’ve down one DVD downsize already and now with this move, we’re ready to do another big one. I do love my 30 Rock DVDs and watch them a fair bit (we don’t have cable) but those are the only ones I am attached to. For my husband it is the Sopranos, The Wire and The Office. I wonder what we can sell them for vs. what they would cost to buy on iTunes…
Another way to somewhat “downsize” your dvds is to simply get rid of the packaging. I did that with a lot of mine. I bought one of those binders with the CD sleeves to keep just the discs in and just recycled the cases. Saves a ton of space and then you just have one piece to move instead of all those miscellaneous packages.
I like this idea and did it with my CDs way back when. Only catch is if you want to then sell them you don’t have the DVD jacket.
Hide the stuff you don’t want to sell at the urban garage sale in a separate room, and have someone stand guard. I speak from experience.
Donate what’s left after the sale too.
And rip the DVDs… for sure.
Thanks – checked out your garage sale post. Very useful!
We had the same challenge with DVDs and CDs when moving from UK to Canada. You can find ‘multi-region’ DVD players which will play both UK and North American DVD formats. You could also ‘rip’ the DVDs to your laptop(s) harddrive. That’ll remove the DVD region Code and allow you to play the movies without a battery draining DVD. Keep any ripped DVDs as backup.
Thanks for the tips, Al. Another wrench in the planning: we may not get a television once we are over there. We also won’t know until we have moved there if we are renting a furnished or unfurnished flat.
How exciting! Living in a room with a mattress sounds lovely! When I used to go to a yoga studio I remember thinking “I would love for my house to look like a yoga studio, hardwood floors with a few mats, that’s it!”
In some areas in China they sleep on a piece of wood. If you have hardwood floors, that’s taken care of.
After getting rid of so much stuff for our move into an RV, I can say that I shouldn’t have spent so much time “deciding” on what to keep and what to get rid of. I should have just gotten rid of everything without even looking. Making decisions is so draining and stressful.
I’ve been getting ready for this move since September, I admire you for taking care of all this in such a short amount of time! You are so efficient! I’m happy for you for the adventure you are about to live!
Warmly,
Mariza
http://myownversion.com
You are so right – the decision making can be more work than the doing. I’m trying to be ruthless but also fast. I know there will be some “I should have kept x” talk once we are over there but, such is life.