Am starting the process / existential crisis of sorting out what to take/ leave behind.
I have tried the Marie Kondo approach (‘does this cruet bring me joy?’ and the William Morris technique (‘is this bath mat beautiful or useful?) so now it’s time to turn to the collective experience of the forum...
What are you glad you brought with you, and what should you have left behind?

For me it was just some artwork that was one of a kind and irreplaceable. It was going to cost too much/be too awkward to ship them over framed so we just unframed things- secured them in tubes and brought them over on our initial flight over.
My husband and I came over with 4 large suitcases mainly of clothes, had one box shipped to us (which was more hassle than it was worth & I wouldn’t do it again)
We just bought everything out here. Furnished our unfurnished house at a furniture thrift store for barely $200.
Bought a new bed and mattress from Ikea- for about $500 in total.
Bought kitchen stuff/towels/bedding etc initially in Walmart and have since gradually replaced some things- and some are perfectly fine and nice and we still use them.
Brought smaller electronics with us- phones, laptops, kindle etc.
Otherwise TV and stuff we bought out here.

We rent, and all rented places come with kitchen white goods so no cost to us there.

Used moving as a good opportunity to give away/donate/throw out about 90% of what we owned. It felt amazing. Made a point of no longer buying stuff for the sake of it or on a whim and it feels great.

Nothing I would have changed really. Nothing else I wish I had brought over.
:-) definitely a good time to clear out that’s for sure.

Good luck!

The furniture thrift store was great- we got here with very little money (we basically moved here with about £1000 to our names with husband starting a job 3 days after we arrived) so- we went to Canadian Tire and bought an inflatable mattress for $60 and some bedding from Walmart.
Went to the furniture thrift store the next day- they had numbers of several “man with a van”- so we picked out a bunch of things; 3 seater sofa ($40), arm chair ($20), coffee table ($20), side table ($10), dining table ($40), 5 dining chairs ($20), 4 bedside tables ($20) and a unit($20) for in the living room. Then paid the man with a van $60 to load his truck up and drop it off at our house- he was great too and helped carry it all in as there was just me and my husband.
Some stuff we got was great too! Really well made sofa in just a neutral colour. A solid oak dining table which I honesty love! And a coffee table which I will probably have for a long while because I love it too!
We used the inflatable mattress for about a week until we got our Ikea bed and mattress.

I had some nice pieces of furniture in the U.K. that at the time I felt quite attached to- but friends and family claimed some things and we donated/sold some others- but just over 2 years down the line and I’m really not bothered anymore. Haha

​​​​​my primark skinny jeans (still doing well) - you have to be a size 0 to get in the ones they have here!