How much can you get into a 20ft container? We're toying with shipping and buying and £1700 sounds decent.

Friends of ours got a 3 bed house in one, including 2 sofas, king size bed for them, beds for the kids, all main furniture. I think you need to pack smart though, use the insides of cupboards and drawers etc. vacuum bags for bulky soft stuff etc.

My son managed to fit 80 boxes, 2x55 inch tvs, 2x 2 seat sofas, stereo stand, tv stand, 3 chest of draws, 3 night stands, 1 end table, 4 dining room chairs and table, 1 coffee table, 5 x book cases (flat packed) 2 small book cases, 1 king size bed, 1 double bed, 1 single bed, 4 patio chairs, countless pictures and mirrors,ironing board, stand up lamp, tools out of 2 sheds.
Thats all I can remember.
My tip is to make sure you buy boxes all the same size, easier to stack.

Regards
Lynn

I have filled a 20 foot container on a self load twice in last 3 years, one was a 3 bed semi and the other a 4 bed detached... both were coming to Canada and I think the most expensive was around 2000 pounds, however, I wouldn't want anybody to get the idea that it is an easy option...... it is very hard work, requires lots of friends as helpers and requires some planning (eg we were given 2 hours loading/unloading time at each end)..no ramp was provided to assist loading .... similar size boxes is a very good idea and being very creative with packaging etc

no damage of note occurred during transit in either case.

It can be done and you can save money

Yes we only had 2 hours to load the container but what we did was to hire a storage unit with a ramp and a free truck hire, once at the storage, we unloaded furniture and boxes onto plastic pallets, shrink wrapped it all and stored it until the container arrived, then all we had to do was load the pallets into the container, it took my son and myself 90 minutes to do this. the friends came in handy moving the stuff into the storage unit.
We asked upakweship for the dimensions of the container which helped us decide how many pallets we needed.

I also agree it is hard work but no one would pack your belongings better than yourself.

Regards
Lynn

I wrote all the information on how we moved ourselves a few months ago so if your interested you can find it on my post.
Lynn

I'm almost fully unpacked now, we used GB liners this time round and they were marvellous! Their agent here allied, were also marvellous and id highly recommend both of them!
Just over 4 weeks door to door tho so I didn't quite get round to tidying up in advance!