How to get ready for moving day
A crew arriving to a house that is genuinely ready loads at a pace that surprises people. A crew arriving to a house that is nearly ready spends the first hour working around you, and on an hourly job that hour is the most expensive one of the day.
The gap between those two is not effort, it is sequence. Here is the order that works.
A week out
Finish deciding what is not coming. This is the single highest-value task in the whole week, because every item you are still debating on move day gets carried, loaded and then debated again at the other end. If there is a cleanout, a donation run or a sale to arrange, this is the week it has to happen.
Confirm the practical constraints at both ends while there is still time to fix them. Elevator bookings, building loading windows, gate codes and parking restrictions all take longer to sort than people expect, and none of them can be solved at eight in the morning on the day.
Two days out
Get the boxes finished and sealed. Not mostly finished. A sealed, labeled box goes on the truck; an open one becomes a decision. Label the room it is going to rather than what is inside it, because the crew is routing boxes to rooms, not reading inventories.
Pull out everything you need for the next few days and put it somewhere the crew will not touch. A bathroom, a car boot, a taped-off corner. Say out loud where it is when the crew arrives, because the single most common lost-item story is a bag that was deliberately set aside and then helpfully loaded.
- Medication, chargers, documents and anything you would panic about losing
- A change of clothes and basic toiletries per person
- Keys, remotes and the paperwork for the new place
- Tools you might want at the other end before the boxes are open
- Anything valuable or irreplaceable that you would rather carry yourself
The night before
Empty and defrost the fridge and freezer. A freezer that is defrosting during the move leaks into the truck, and there is no good moment to discover that.
Clear the routes. The path from the furthest room to the front door, and from the front door to where the truck will sit, should be walkable with a full load in both hands. Rugs up, plant pots moved, cables out of doorways. In winter, that means the driveway and the walk are cleared and salted before the crew arrives, not while they wait.
On the morning
Walk the crew through the whole house before anything is lifted. Every room, including the basement, the garage and the shed. Point at what is not going. Point at what needs disassembling. Point at the piece you are worried about. Five minutes here removes most of the questions that would otherwise interrupt the next four hours.
Then keep children and pets somewhere else. This sounds like a nicety and is not. Doors get propped open all day, heavy things move through narrow spaces, and a crew that is watching for a toddler is a crew working slower than it can.
Stay reachable, but stay out of the carry path. The most useful thing you can do once the loading starts is answer questions quickly and let the route stay clear.