In the process of moving from a 3 bed house with a child and wife and getting in prices for a removal company to move us 5 miles up the road. Some of the prices are crazy high but on the whole about the £500 mark. (£800 for a full pack) Now the last time I moved was 10 years ago and came from a 1 bed flat so there was not too much to move. This time there will be loads to go, other than all the white goods as they are integral. I’ve started thinking about trying to save money and do it myself with a few vans I can borrow but what is the reality of moving yourself. it seems like a huge job to me and others I’ve spoken to say it could be money well spent. Have you regretted moving yourself?

pay someone.

It’s money very well spent and £500 sounds a bargain.

We did it ourselves a couple of years ago.

3 bed to 4 bed 3 miles away with 2 kids and a loft full of my wife’s books. She has a lot of them (40+ boxes).

80 odd 20″ boxes in total, lots of bubble wrap and 7 trips in a long wheel based Transit plus numerous car loads.

Cost about £250 in total for man & van and all of the packaging.

Absolutely knackering and it took hours.

If I could have afforded to pay somebody I would have done.

Get some mates, a van and do it yourself, easy and then spend some money on a party!

Simples!

I moved from Southampton to about 15 miles up the road from Afan 8 years ago.
It was great fun. We were moving on the saturday so got the boys round for a ‘moving out party’ friday afternoom/evening.
We loaded up the 7.5ton lorry i’d hired(with tail lift which is a god send) on friday and backed it up to my garage overnight for security.
Left early saturday morning.
Myself in my car with stereo, my wife with my 2 kids and her brother in our other car and my mate and my dad in the truck.
Unloaded by mid afternoon leaving enough time for my mate,my dad and my brother in law to get the truck back saturday before 6pm
It was great to be in complete control of everything

To be honest I’d pay £800. £300 extra for literally not having to do a thing is definately worth the money. I was sceptical about the packing service when we moved 3 years ago, but Mrs FD persuaded me.

We did not have to pack a thing, the guys turned up in the morning, packed everything and unpacked at the other end without us having to lift a finger.

Completely took the stress out of moving house. No way would a hire vans etc. Even with a Luton van you would be looking at probably hiring for at least 2 days and being seriously knackered and stressed, plus all the time getting boxes, and packing etc.

All I would say is that you need to know which room you want the stuff to go in to in the new house as they are that quick you could end up with stuff in the wrong room.

We used Pickfords (3 years ago)

£500 sounds about the going rate, that’s what my 3 bed cost a year or so ago.

Well worth the money booking a decent firm imho, after getting let down by cowboys the time before, the night before the move!

Hired a van and did it myself, couple of mates took sickies to help me! – never, never again will I do it myself!

Stressed, I still losing hair after that move!

😉

Its a matter of how you feel about it as a family, for some people a house move is the most traumatic thing they can imagine, for them getting the pros in is like pulling plaster off really fast. Doing it yourself is like pulling it off really slowly.

If you’re not in the habit of moving things about in vans you may well be really surprised at how long it takes and how many loads it’ll involve. You’re belongings won’t be insured from door to door either if you do it yourself

How efficiently have you lived? Are you accumulators of belongings, or are you always paring back?

I moved from a flat to our last house. It took a 7.5t truck. When we moved from our last house to our current place, I paid someone to pack and move everything.

Why? because some things are worth paying for, and backbreaking labour is one of them.

Oh, and we filled a pantechnicon – which tells me we own way too much stuff. So have a bloody good clearout first..!

Pay someone else! We paid 500 cash to move the contents of a 3-bed house 15 mins down the road. It took four guys three hours to get everything into the van – these were big guys carring multiple boxes at a time – and was the best money we’ve ever spent. Also, if you’re moving as part of a chain, you may well need to be out by midday; purely based on man hours required, getting a moving company makes so much sense.

You’ve confirmed my thoughts, pay someone. I quite like the idea of paying someone to pack all my stuff up as I dread doing it myself. That will mean that I can concentrate on moving my bikes and motor bikes myself. It also means that I’ll be encouraged to de-clutter before they come so they don’t think we keep so much tat. i just know that moving myself will make me grumpy and will take the wife 10 times longer as she finds stuff she not seen in ages.
Is it acceptable to start sorting out the garage before the childs room is painted a girls colour?

before the childs room is painted a girls colour?

we’d been to see about 5 houses and our daughter got quite upset when we left the last one.

Me: “Why are you crying?”

her, through the sobs: “You keep going to look at houses with no girls bedrooms in them!”

garage first, your wife and daughter can bond over decorating the childs room 🙂

Is it acceptable to start sorting out the garage before the childs room is painted a girls colour?

Moved into new house in April.
Bike storage in garage sorted by May.
Just doing daughter’s bedroom now….

😉

Done the ‘mates and a transit’ thing about five times now, including returning the favour.

Without kids it’s doable but ideally you want someone at the new house moving boxes around, and a couple of you going back and forth basically dumping stuff at the front doorstep. Takes a good number of trips in a transit so there comes a point when driving 15 miles to get stuff then turning around and heading back gets tiresome.

Last time the transit got a puncture, thankfully only a few hundred feet from new house but that could have been a ‘mare out on a main road changing tyres with a fully loaded van.

Mate hired a couple of men in a van to shift stuff for him, took the risk as they were no doubt uninsured (but then you probably are shifting it yourself) so maybe a halfway house – you pack stuff up nicely and get them to do the donkey work.

Completely took the stress out of moving house

See, I think the opposite. The stress is in the other stuff, solicitors, estate agents, mortgages etc.
Once that’s done, filling up a truck is a wonderful way to empty the mind IMO.

We moved a mile, from a 2 bed to a 3 bed house.
I hired a 7.5tonner for a day from a local firm, cycled round, chucked the bike in, drove home, part filled it up that evening, finished off the next morning, drove the stuff round, emptied it out, and drove the van back. I did 17km in it in total!

IIRC the truck was £120-£130 to hire

I did hire a sack trolley for the white goods and boxes (£4 extra) and also made sure it had a tail lift. We have more stuff now, but I reckon I could do the same again, possibly hire a transit as well if it was a long journey.

Pay someone £800 for something I can do myself? Bugger that, that’s new bike money!! 🙂