This is a belated post as I finished moving some times ago and thought I would blog about some tips to remind myself for future house moving.
I have underestimated the gross amount of items that I had and ended up having to arrange for two house moving rounds (3 truckloads in total). I booked a Lalamove 10-ft truck plus mover for the second round of house moving, which is a more cost-effective option, since I do not need cartons nor wrapping anymore. I had 20 cartons provided by the first mover and not all of them were moved in the first round.
The booking via mobile app was straightforward and transparent. The whole process went smoothly - the driver arrived early and moved all my remaining bulky items and carton boxes with care, despite the wet weather. There's also in-app discount vouchers so I highly recommend Lalamove if you just need a no-frill moving service.
Here's my house-moving tips / lessons learnt from this round:
1) Prep appliances before the move
Defrost the refrigerator at least one day before moving. If you have a layer of ice in your freezer compartment, do defrost it properly by melting the ice (off the main power and DO NOT use any sharp object to remove the ice) and put a rag inside to soak up the water. That would save you from having to clean up any leakage of water from a defrost during and after the move.
Turn off the washing machine tap and disconnect the connecting pipe. Drain away the water in the pipe and keep the pipe properly, so that you can fix it back at the new place. If you leave it to your movers to do that, be prepared to clean up puddles of water on the floor afterwards. (Not to mention that wet floor is a hazard!)
These might seem like no-brainer, but trust me, when you are in the midst of the house moving "chaos", many things can just slip your mind without a checklist.
2) Check the conditions of your furniture before moving
Do check for any existing defects in your furniture before the move so that you will -1) know whether any defect found later on is due to the mover mishandling your furniture -2) whether it is worth the effort moving the old furniture to the new house.
I only realized that my old bed has a disintegrated bottom piece after the moving as I saw chip-offs and pieces of black stuff all over the floor of my new bedroom. One of my bed's legs was also loose. I didn't know about all the wear-and-tear until the move made them obvious. I could have saved a trolley space for other items and just discard this old bed.
3) Use clean large trash bags to pack the clothes before putting into the cartons
You know those big black trash bag from household item shops? They are super useful in a house move. What I did was to just bundle all my clothes that were on hangers and stuff them into the new trash bags, so that after unboxing I can just drag the whole bag out of carton and straightaway hang the clothes in my new house wardrobe.
4) Confirm with the mover company beforehand all the items that need dismantling and the charges, get an acknowledgement message
The mover company that I hired (prior to Lalamove) charge by per truck booking. It's stated in their catalogue "one simple dismantling per truck booking", however, the movers that came told me that it is 1 dismantling per booking (and their so-called two trucks booking is actually just one truck running two trips!). So I was charged extra fee for the dismantling of a second bed, ugh.
The liaison person of the mover company was totally uncontactable, despite my multiple call attempts to clarify during the move and the movers themselves could also not get their office. There was also no follow up to my messages after the move. That's the downside of hiring budget movers I supposed.
5) Check how many trolley spaces the movers have
Another thing that I learnt was that the movers do not accept squeezing in of "loose items" even if there's still space on the truck ("loose items" being anything that's not placed on their trolleys and wrapped up).
A 10-ft truck can fit 6 such trolleys. So if your items are bulky eg. wardrobe, bed, sofa, dining table, it is likely that one item would already take up one trolley space. So prioritize what are the "must-move", especially when you see that they have only a few trolleys left. Luckily I checked with them and told them to leave aside the storeroom stuff and sofa, which are non-essential.
6) Label the cartons with stick-on papers and number them all
This is for convenience of unpacking in order of priority and also to prevent any carton from getting missed out when moving. I labelled the cartons with stick-on papers instead of writing on the box surface so that I can still re-use and resell these clean cartons after moving.
7) Pack the fragile and heavy stuff first
I packed the fragile and heavy stuff first, and saved my clothes for the last. This is because those things were seldom used e.g. decorative ceramic wares, needed more time for packaging and definitely needed the help of movers to bring them over. If I have leftover clothes and accessories in my wardrobe, I can simply put them into my luggage bags and bring over.
Small, loose items I packed them into containers or small cartons first before putting these into the big cartons. Those non-essential light-weight household items I also packed last or not at all as I could go back for them later.
8) Donate or sell unwanted items so there's less to move
Start donating or selling your unwanted loots a few months before moving. So the stuff that were reserved for buyers or waiting to be discarded I left them behind at the old place for pick up later.
Thanks for reading!
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