PoppetUK

Hi all,

We've got our container arriving in the UK at the end of the week. The hard bit is going to be fitting everything into a smaller house. Thankfully it has 4 beds still (big advantage living further out of London ) but I know the rooms are smaller.

Any tips for when they start unpacking. How do you get some sort of control of it?

I remember last time things just got dumped but it wasn't so bad because we had one room to keep the kiddies away from it all and it was single story etc etc.

Appreciate any advice for making it as smoothe as possible.....

Thanks Poppet

Mummy in the foothills

No help here, you'd have to keep me in with the kids, I'll be diving into each box and getting over excited.
Did you mark them with the room they belong in? if so I'd have them dumped in the right part of the house at least.

ble

I remember when the container arrived here from the UK.
It was nightmare (and I had some family who came to help direct boxes to different directions.

I seem to recall that there had been no logic to the packing at the end of the day. If they had a couple of breakables from teh kitchen then they would go and find a cushion or some soft toys to put in top of the box.

My advice, (and this is what we did) would be to double up the kids, (ie two of their beds into one room temporarily) to allow for one room to be used as storage. For all those boxes that are mixed up.

I also quickly read down the list and found one box of toys for each of the kids, and left them in an empty room to 'rediscover' what they hadn't seen for 3 months.

But the house that we rented out here although smaller than our UK home, wasn't small really. So we did have odd rooms, like a sun room that allowed us to spread out a little.
I am not looking forward to that logistic of going home. But just figure, as long as I ensure I leave most of our couches (we have 5 between 3 rooms here) then life should be okay. They are the worst things for tripping over.

mbike

Hi Poppet,

This is what I remember from when out container arrived:

We were (still are, just) in a rental, so we agreed that we wouldn't unpack everything. (Gotta love that useless 4th bedroom/box room in 1950's houses that is now our...box room filled floor to ceiling with 36 boxes!)

We only got the removals men to unpack furniture. The boxes we did want to open were left along the walls in the appropriate rooms for us to sort out in our own time

One or other of us took it in turns to stand by the tailgate and tick off the boxes/items as the men took them out. We also told them where we want the stuff at this point.

We used the garage as an overflow, directing stuff to there when we couldn't decide where it was to go.

One of the kids rooms got all the toy boxes and we let the kids open a few of these. We didn't see them for most of of the morning after that!

Don't offer too much tea. For some reason the Aussie packers were just keen to get the job done and turned down almost every offer. By contrast the UK men took up every offer, drank lots of tea, ate lots of biscuits, talked a lot and then had to keep using the toilet. Easiest not to offer too much tea.

Don't trash the boxes when you've finished. Cut the tape, collapse them and put them in a pile in the attic. You'll need them when you move back to Australia again (joke). Ditto for all that paper. The only waste we generated was the ripped paper/bubble stuff and a few weakened boxes.

Be prepared for a few tears as your old life in Australia pours out of the boxes. Unpacking is emotionally-draining and the unexpected things like a honky nut or a restaurant till receipt can trigger a wave of unexpected nostalgia.

Have fun and watch out for the redbacks!

brits1

I just unpacked everything I knew or thought we would need asap...the rest is in storage until we buy a home. The removalists were great....they asked if I wanted this or that unpacked etc....we all did it room by room....good luck

Loch Lomond

Open every box and package while the removers are there to check for breakages and damage. Help's substantially with any insurance claim.

mbike

Good advice. But we had 250 boxes so they would have been with us all night. FWIW the guy from Kent who packed for us did an amazing job and, having checked all the boxes in our own time, not a single thing got broken on the way back (unlike pss on the way over who packed things not quite as well resulting in several breakages)

PoppetUK

Thanks y'all.

Everything here. 2 boxes weren't packed (noted down as owner packed but they were suppose to be repacked. Unfortunately buggers speakers and not sure if DVD system will work, other damage was from unpacking with knife on hall side table)

Now for the task of tidying it up. We've chosen to unpack a lot so they could take boxes. Kitchen is left for us to do tonight as we don't have work surfaces.

So long days ahead for the next few days. Glad to get our stuff though.

Thanks again

Poppet

Loch Lomond

We've got Kent coming in this afternoon to quote us for moving back to Scotland. You reckon they're good then?

K14

Hi we got our container delivered 3 weeks ago. Kents packed it in Perth and we weren't very impressed with the packers. They didn't repack something that we asked them to and that's now damaged, as well as a few other items. Packing/labelling wasn't great. They used a different agent over here than we asked them to and didn't tell us until it was too late to do anything about it. When doing the quote they told us it would take 8 weeks max door to door - it took 12. Kents said they have no idea why the guy who quoted said it would take only 8.

They ignored our complaints. Wouldn't recommend them.

Rant over!

mbike

They were good for us - although not, by the sound of it for others - I can only speak about our own experience. We used them both outbound to Australia and Inbound to the UK and they were very thorough with packing and loading. We were able to track our container across the world. Their agents at this end (PSS) were fine too.

I would make sure you discuss with them and any other packers who quote some of the concerns raised by K14 to make sure these don't happen to you, should you choose to use them.

stm1971

We used Kent for our move back (from Perth to Kent! UK) and they were great.

Agree with mbike, not the most chatty of guys, they just want to get the job done asap, so don't worry about offering tea all the time, BUT they packed well and we had no breakages this end. Would definitely recommend them.

Loch Lomond

Sorry for hijacking the thread Poppet.

Thanks for the heads up on Kent, their guy (Jason) came round yesterday and seemed to be reasonably savvy.

Fish n Chips 56

Hello Poppett..

Dvd System, not sure of your problem, it should work if not damaged, I know you can convert DVD player to work anywhere in world, google info if needed.

What size was your container?

Are you happy to be Home?

Best wishes.

brits1

Lovely to hear from you.....I knew I should of gone with Kents...lol...we had some damage to various items...even though we had full cover Insurance with the removal company, they were devils when it came to claiming...and once again not such a happy outcome for us...per the norm..lol....