CanuckColleen1972

I'm moving back to Canada in May and now looking through everything my husband & I (and 2 kids) have accumulated, to see what to bring with, and what to bring new. We are essentially choosing to start over, as most of our furniture now has reached the end of its life. So will be buying our furniture in Canada definitely.

My question is, for those who are doing as we are and really only moving sentimental items and clothing, what would you have made the effort to move?

To be honest, I've been here in the UK for so long I'm used to the prices here so don't know what things cost in Canada anymore, relative to the cost of living.

I've read numerous times that bedding and soft furnishings are really expensive - is there anything else that you would definitely bring instead of buying in Canada?

Thanks for any advice!!!

Tangram

Do a search. There was a thread almost identical to this a few months back.

dbd33

To save the OP the trouble of having to read an old thread we could summarise the results as follows:

Things people really wish they could bring:

- beer
- cheese
- scenery
- architecture
- family

Things it's economically sensible to bring:

- everything you own now except things that are powered by electricity and spin or heat up and cars less than fifteen years old

Things worth buying in order to bring:

- hair flatteners

Things that people will drone on indefinitely about the merits of bringing, the possibility of converting and who has the one with most knobs when, in fact, they could get a new one for not much money anyway:

- televisions

Things not viable to bring because Canada has lots, that people bring anyway:

- dogs
- children
- cats

TheCanes

I have to admit that we didn't really bring anything, but a few sentimental things (photos + such), and clothes (even there I wish I'd left most of them now ).

We could not bring ourselves to spend all that money to bring over all our older furniture, when we could spend a similar amount on buying new. Okay, maybe we did spend some more on new furniture. It did make the start to our new live so much nicer, though.

snowcandy

More travel adapters for small electrical stuff like kids' ds chargers, phone and camera chargers, laptop, hair straighteners, etc.

Simple Skin Products- can't get them here

Extra duvet covers

Oh and some nice M and S knickers

BristolUK

I have hundreds of UK VHS tapes which I brought, along with 2 VCRs. I completely forgot a different TV was needed.

The necessary combination of equipment - Universal VCR/TV/coverter etc - is quite expensive and suspect quality. Coverting them to DVD is way too big a job.

Even though there are some gems there, I'd have been better off selling what I could/leaving it all behind and spending the shipping costs on replacing what I could.

Of course, I could have brought a TV and relied on it still working, but if I was doing it again, I'd have brought nothing and enjoyed buying some of it all over again, at no extra cost.

There's lots of Brit stuff on DVD that I'd never have expected - The Beiderbecke Trilogy for example - and I've even found some Pierre Etaix stuff to watch on line.


I realise this is the reverse of what was asked but it's still relevant.

jericho

Would have brought my plasma TV. I didnt know at the time, but it would have worked fine.

Most people will tell you to leave that kind of stuff behind, but the set up costs in a new country are f***ing ridiculous so you need to save as much as you can.

Howefamily

LOVE IT!!!
I wish that I had brought deodorant (hate the stuff here) more bottom sheets for the beds, more adapters for the DS and laptop etc

Siouxie

Beds (truly expensive here, particularly mattress's)
Hair products - according to my son the stuff here (for moulding etc) is crap
Mixed Herbs
Squash

I would agree, starting from scratch involves ridiculous amounts of money, though $ stores / Walmart / Zellers for basic kitchen equipment helps defray the costs a little.

Bring as much as you can!

jerry brewer

Hi
My old motorcycle i sold, and I would have bought a british maufactured car over 15yrs old,( for import rules ), like a mini or something similar.
cheers
Jerry

jo_mcculloch125

omg, I would defo bring bedding and pillows/duvets as they are really expensive here in Canada. We started afresh, as you plan to do, and buying living room furniture, dining room furniture, bedroom furniture and kids bedroom furniture cost us a FORTUNE.... goodbye savings!! But its something you juyst jhave to do, as shipping your old furniture was probably about the same cost anyway. Bring what you can actually, because I find lots of household things expensive over here... Good luck!

Steve_

I've summarized the bed nightmare I had on here a couple of times before, it's not just that beds are expensive it's also tricky to get a decent one I have found, to cut a very long story short, if you want a decent bed at a reasonable price in Canada, go to IKEA.

If you've got a bed you're happy with in the UK, bring it with you if you're using a container or bringing anything else with you that makes the shipping cost worthwhile.

However bear in mind the bed sizes are different in the UK so you will not be able to get sheets that fit (in fact even if you have a bed that is a Canadian/US size I find it hard to get sheets that fit, frankly). But it's no big deal to mail order from the UK anyway.

Other advice:

Do not buy anything at The Brick. Loads of Canadians will tell you to do this, they are wrong. They are really awkward about returns and most of their stuff is made in China rubbish, or has some corner that has been cut to lower the price (e.g. excessive use of polyester) that you will overlook. Terrible company to deal with, and I'm not basing it on one experience at one shop either, I'm basing it on three different experiences at three different branches before I gave up.

Also another tip - beware of brand name engineering. A Simmons/Serta/blah blah you buy in one part of the country or in another country may be a very different beast in another part of the country. So if someone says I bought brand A and it was really good, your experience may differ considerably. Different batches can be very different, different factories turn out different stuff.

I think Bed, Bath and Beyond are a good example, you can buy stuff in the same packaging that says it is say, Egyptian cotton, 1000 thread and in reality they were made in different factories in different places, and are a different size with a different pattern and are sat on the same shelf, because they came in a different batch.

I bought one set of sheets that were fantastic, went back to buy another, same packaging but they were totally different and completely crap.

rivingtonpike

Our 40ft container cost us a shade over £7000 if I remember rightly - door to door. I absolutely definitely couldn't replace everything in our house for that. Just the simple stuff in our garage (bikes, tools, topbox, sailing kit, camping stuff, picnic stuff, garden chairs etc etc...) would have cost a FORTUNE to replace. Even taking out the antique stuff and the paintings from the equation, just mentally totting up each room would go into way more that the cost of shipping for us. As others have said, bedroom furniture alone is VERY expensive. Even if you go onto ikea.ca you will get a good idea of the costs - even for fairly modest stuff.

Apart from anything else, I think it's nice to have some reminder of our old life about the place. Staring a new life in a new country doesn't mean you have to leave all traces of the old life behind.

Good luck with the move. It's certainly an adventure.

dbd33

I quite agree that one should ship everything but this thread makes me feel an absolute minimalist. I can't imagine owning £7000 worth of stuff and certainly have no idea what the thread count, if any, of the sheets might be.

Piff Poff

We came with basic stuff, clothes and sentimental bits and bobs as we thought we'd buy new.

We wish we had brought our bed - to use in the guest room once we had bought a new one. We wish we had brought our sofa - to use in the basement once we'd got a new one. We wish we'd brought our dining table and chairs. Kitchen equipment would have been handy as would crockery, we decided we were going to go completely new and buy as a couple rather than having stuff that I had previously.

When we got here it seemed the first three months was spent going around and around the shops looking for stuff we couldn't find or didn't like. Tastes are a bit different here and it takes time to adjust and along with everything else it would have just been easier if we could have taken time to choose and decide before we bought just because we needed.

I should have brought my Ducati and OH should have brought his Challenger, but we didn't and the sale of those items did mean we could buy the stuff we should have brought but didn't