Top tips for moving house

From colour coded boxes to a clever use of socks, our resident fixer will have you packed and moved before you can say, ‘if it shakes, it breaks.’

Australians move house a lot according to the stats.

For more reasons than there are grains of sand on a beach, Australians move house a lot.

In its Housing Mobility and Conditions study, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that in 2019-20 more than 40 per cent of Australian households had moved in the previous five years, with 1.14 million individual moves taking place during that single year.

Finding a removalist is one of the most important steps.

That’s an awful lot of cartons – and stress.

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Finding a removalist

The first thing to do is find a mover.

You’ll need to know how many cubic metres of stuff you have, how many steps and steep driveways and lifts need to be conquered, and the distance of the trip between Home A and Home B.

The number of steps can add to the cost of a move.

But there’s more to watch for; according to Fair Trading, also check if the removalist is accredited by the Australian Furniture Removalists Association, and double-check exactly what their insurance covers.

See if your current insurance carrier offers ‘transit’ insurance, because it’s better to be safe than sorry.

You could do it yourself – or hire a relocation specialist.

If you can afford it, there is help available, from house ‘packers’ to relocation specialists who do the whole move, at a price.

For the more common moves, there are places such as Muval, whose website offers a great shortcut.

“You can see what’s available as far as removalists go, straightaway,” says Muval’s guru of moving Alana Lowes.

“People can just pop in all the details they have about their move, then our smart technology will spit out the availability and prices for all the pre-qualified removalists we have.

The Muval team then locks everything in place and offers more help if needed.

Label boxes clearly to avoid confusion.

“There’s so many pieces to put together in a move,” says Lowes.

“It’s a bit like playing Tetris, because everything has to align perfectly on the day.”

Share a cunning plan

Make a fabulous ‘to do’ list in Google Docs which you can share online with all the family/flatmates involved in the move, making each person accountable.

Include such prompts as:

* Send out change of address notifications – include the pets rego/microchip (they love to get lost on moving day).

Make the ultimate to do list.

* Put out a call on Facebook for free cartons – a good money saver. Scrounge more from JB-HiFi, Bunnings etc. If using random boxes, cut out handholds so they’re easier to carry.

* A packing schedule.

* Reminder to eat whatever is left in the fridge – saves on throwing away food and makes cleaning the fridge easier.

* A cleaning roster.

Don’t forget to pack your ‘survival kit’ last.

Top packing hacks

1. Don’t pay to move stuff you should have thrown out or donated – cull!

2. Use paper plates between dinner plates for padding – it’s so much quicker.

3. Put socks over the good glassware.

4. See if you can leave all your bedroom drawers filled, with cling-wrap to secure.

5. Put hanging clothes (10 hangers at a time) into large black bags with ties, and tie them at the curve of the hanger – nothing moves and it takes seconds to unpack.

6. Repeat the phrase, “If it shakes, it breaks” every hour or so.

Moving is stressful – no matter how organised you are.

7. Use colour coded tape on the boxes, put the code into the Google Doc.

8. Pack the least used stuff first (linens, books etc), with the last box being your survival kit for the new place. This box should have toilet paper, detergent, gloves, a jug, coffee, tea, Coke, long-life milk, sugar and tea spoons. Oh, and Panadol.

The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale puts moving house way down the bottom half of their list of 43 stressful life events; while death of a spouse equals 100 points, changing of residence is rated at a mere 20 points. Twenty points! That just has to be a typo.

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