MOVINGS

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Planning the removal

The first decisions: establishing the period and evaluating if is more convenient to move by itself or to contact a professional mover

How to choose the date

Sometimes you have no choice because your rent contract expires; in this case, be free from engagements the whole week.

If you can choose the date, keep in consideration:

• if you change town, your sons' school engagements;
• ensure you are free from engagements during that period;
• if you decide to entrust your removal to a company, keep in mind that May, June and July usually are the busiest months (it depends by the country, so verify this); if you want to do the removal during these months, notify the removal company 3 or 4 months in advance. If not, you could pay more than usual and you mightn't have a good service.
• the climate, if possible, must be pleasant (not too cold or wet);
• the best months to do the removal are September, October or November (it depends by the country, so verify this). Furthermore, in these months the removals companies haven't too much work, so it is quite likely to get better prices.

Do the removal by yourself or entrust to a company?

If you want to spare some money, you can easily do the removal by yourself. It's very important to evaluate if doing the removal by yourself would be convenient or not. In the next lines, we'll try to give you some help.

In the following cases it is NOT convenient doing the removal by yourself:

• You are in a hurry. If you do the removal by yourself, you will need several days; if you entrust the removal to a company, they usually need just a day.
• High value furniture and/or objects. If you aren't a skilled mover, it's very easy to damage something. The company's employers are skilled in assembling and disassembling and most of the time they use external lifts, so it's unlikely they would damage your belongings. Moreover, they have an insurance against damages.
• Lots of furniture. The removal companies need a little time to assemble/disassemble the furniture. So the amount of furniture is not a problem for them; the cost of the removal increases slightly if you have a lot of furniture. If you do the removal by yourself, you'll waste a lot of time in assembly/disassembly the furniture since you are unskilled.
• Difficult access to stairs or top floors. If you have difficult access to these and there isn't any lift, it's very likely to damage something and do more harm than good. You could solve the problem by renting an external lift (read the chapter about the renting of external lifts).
• Long-haul removals. Most of the time doing the removal by yourself is not good value because you would have to do many trips. The removal companies can do only one trip since they have large trucks and skilled employers (they can save room by storing the furniture accurately).

In the following cases it may BE CONVENIENT doing the removal by yourself:

• you have a lot of belongings but few pieces of furniture;
• the new home is not far away;
• the stairs are easily accessible or there is a lift.

Now you can choose the date of the removal and decide whether to do it by yourself or to ask a company. The next chapter explains how to organize the removal.