My USC wife and I are planning to move back to the UK after 5½ years in the US. My wife is a teacher and is in talks with a UK teaching agency that would do a lot of the legwork for us, but we still want to get rid of as much of our stuff as possible before the move. Trouble is, neither of us has really had a move where we have had to get rid of furniture before. I was living at my parents place just before moving over here, so most of "my" furniture was actually theirs, and my wife already had her own aparment and furniture. I know that we will at least need the bed and chairs/sofa until right up until we move. Does anyone have any advice about the timing of selling off our stuff? How long can a person live in an empty apartment?

Sleeping bags on the floor and plastic patio chairs should do for the week before you leave. Ds slept for a week on an air mattress than had a leak.
Or a long stay hotel
The timing must be pretty difficult, as once you ship everything out, all your stuff you want to keep has to fit in two suitcases each.
Last time, I sold off the bulk, then dh packaged boxes for shipping. Then he gave away the couch/bed/fridge in the last week and stayed with our friends for a few days before the flight.
Ds and I flew out ahead of him with a couple of suitcases each.

Funnily enough, as of this afternoon, all we will have left in our place is the bed and the old TV! Everything else has either been sold on Ebay or given to friends neighbours etc.
We only have 4 more days in here though, so i am sure i can cope with breafast, lunch and dinner in bed We are moving it into the lounge so we can also watch TV in bed too.... it will be like the John Lennon and Yoko OnO sit in of many years ago.... what fun!

THats a picture I didn't want in my minds eye, flea and her Dh naked in bed, and doing interviews

Nooo... you really dont wanna go there

Hey Flea just wanted to wish you all the best on your return to the UK.Hope you have a safe flight and a wonderful life,all the best and let us know how you get on....xxxxxxxxxxx

I think the timeline is so difficult, we moved in 2007 from Conway, SC to England, and have just moved back to SC. Both times we ended up staying in an condo for a week or 2 in order to get everything sold, boxed or stored. We have two small children so that meant things were abit trickier. I just tried to do as much downsizing in advance as I could, so the last couple weeks were cleaning and getting rid of the sofa, fridge, w/d, tv. We were pretty organized but still ended up leaving abit of junk with my parents .

Awww thank you. I will certainly do an update. I have butterflies in my tummy constantly as i am so excited!

Hello Nxylas, I'm currently in NC trying to sell my house so I can get home, I've found that Craigslist is probably one of the best ways to go, we've decided that we cannot afford to ship anything home so every month, little by little I'm getting rid of a lot of furniture that doesn't get used that much...I've decided that I could sell my bed no problem because I would just buy a cheap blow up bed and use that..seriously its surprising what you can live without for a week or two..

just pretend your camping out at home..

Ahhhh love it. My hair is somewhat similar to theirs at the moment. It's that long since i had a haircut!
Getting it shawn tomorrow though.

We plan to foist ourselves on our kids for a couple of weeks. They don't know yet.

There probably will be a couple of nights to figure out.

The problem will be at the other end, as I know it can take a while for the stuff to arrive and as we're probably going to rent, we'll need to get a place. But we have various friends and relatives....

They don't know yet, either!

But it's not as if we have kids along, and mostly they're empty nesters, too.

Bev

When I moved back from Bermuda I sent everything pretty much same time I left but then it took nearly two months to get to UK.

I bought two garden chairs, an airbed, a microwave oven and put a borrowed portable TV on a cardboard box. Worked just fine. Really made me appreciate my furniture too.

She probably wants to have her own spouse visa, though.
http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk

How long have you been married?

Also you can hire furniture packages at either end to make life easier. We've done that on both moves, and it makes the time waiting for shipments to arrive much easier.

If you can't sell your furniture easily, and arn't too worried about getting some cash back for it, there are plenty of charities that will come and pick it up for you. many will give a tax reciept so you can at least claim some of the money back on taxes.