As I look around my clutter filled house I am imagining what I would 'bring' and what I would discard, should we move to Canada.

A biggie is the beds. We just bought new beds and I am loathe to not bring them with us. We of course, have to weigh up the cost of transport as opposed to buying new, should we move to Canada.

I went online and checked prices of mattresses and they seem quite high in Canada.

Just looking for people's opinions.

One thing I could not live without would be my wooden furniture that I have collected over the years cheaply from 2nd hand shops and which would probably cost the earth in Canada (antique like).

I don't want to have to buy new from places like brick warehouse or walmart and it doesn't make sense as we possess good enough quality stuff now.
Just looking to see what is cost effective.

What about boxing up your favourite foods? Can you get mushy peas in Canada (canned?) Could I live without my organic stock bullion cubes? I know from a recent trip back to Canada that too many people eat too much processed food and the ingredients of so much food contains e-numbers and MSG and other nasties.

Should I go out and start looking at buying lots of what I 'need' and stocking it up for Canada?

opinions welcomed.

You will get views from two distinct groups of people in particular...the chuck it all away and start afresh mob, and the 'if it isn't firmly cemented in, then take it with you, brigade'. I am firmly in the latter group, I brought beds, pots pans, furniture, my 2CV the dog and three cats...oh, and my kid and husband!

I'm with you MillieF to be honest. I paid for the stuff, I want it with me.

I tallied up how much it would cost to replace all the 'bits', like pots and pans - singly a pot or pan isn't much, but I have about 20 of them, all good quality stainless steel.

I suppose what I am hoping for is for someone to justify me buying even more! by telling me what they wished they had brought, then I can go out and buy it, should I decide I should need it.

A £3000.00 transport cost pales in comparison to actually buying up all the stuff needed to stock up a house again.

thanks for your reply.

If you have stuff that you like and it's good quality , bring it. It's very hard here to find comparable things at fair prices (at least where we are).

Bring everythiNg. Not only is it expensive to buy new it's hard to find modern design but shopping gets to be a chore.

Yes, bring everything. If you're going to buy specific things then a kitchen sink and some of those strips of joiners for electric wires; here they just twist the wires together and don't much worry about the house burning down.

Didn't we have a thread like this a few months ago or is my dementia kicking in again ?

My boat.

Constantly. This is the board for relentless repetition of mildly interested posts on a narrow range of topics. It's not exciting but it is appropriate.

Bring the wooden furniture, deffo.

I have a couple of bits of Victorian pine (drop-leaf table and blanket box) that I bought in London 20 years ago. You would seriously struggle to find stuff like that here.

Bring everything.

You don't say where yoir moving too, but if its a dry Province, for example Alberta, nyou might need a humidifier for your wood furniture, I have a friend who is struggling to keep her antique sideboard from cracking. We bought two logs for bedside tables ftom Montana and they have split somewhat too.

Furniture is expensive here and sometimes of dubious quality, I would rather risk the nice stuff than buy new here.

We sold everything, wish we hadn't.

im in the dont bring shit brigade..sold everything before i left except our house and made a few thousand notes..i will have the same attitude when i leave...i came with nothing i will leave with nothing

Another vote in the "bring everything" column.

A bit like you, we'd relatively recently bought new beds, and a couple of half-decent sticks of secondhand (Victorian/Edwardian) furniture from a local saleroom. Once we'd decided that shipping everything in a container was the way to go, and knowing a bit about pricing and styling of Canadian furniture (OH's family emigrated to Canada in the mid-80s so were able to offer some pithy commentary and advice...), we went out to auctions and salerooms to make a start on furnishing what we knew would be a bigger house.

The extras we bought in advance included stuff like chests of drawers (no wardrobes; Canadian houses tend to have built-in closets), a not-quite-matching set of dining chairs, a few additional chairs for kitchen and bedrooms, some mirrors, a bunch of framed prints (the prints were horrible, but the frames have all been reused on the much bigger acreage of wall we now have!). I wish we'd also bought a dining table. The oak dropleaf job we'd had in our little London flat looked a bit silly stuck in the middle of a dining room here. We bought an ugly but functional table in Ikea a few years ago, but haven't yet come across anything we like, within budget, to replace it with.

Oh, and a kitchen sink with a draining board - we should have brought that with us. dbd's not joking, they don't seem to exist here except in Ikea or as hugely expensive European imports.

Have you tried Penwood? It was in Oakville when we lived there but seems to have moved to near Guelph. Good, solid furniture.

Clearly a business opportunity exists to import sinks with drainers, etc.