How To Prepare for Movers: 17 Essential Tips
Make moving day a piece of cake by being prepared
Highlights
Start planning for movers early by scheduling a moving company and making your packing lists.
Arrange moving insurance, donations, cleaning, and other important tasks weeks ahead of your move.
Start packing nonessentials early, label them carefully, and keep the most important items out to travel with you.
Make arrangements for items that need careful disposal, special handling, or careful disconnecting.
Make sure a trusted person is present when the movers handle your belongings, and cash ready for tips.
Moving is a process that requires significant planning and preparation, whether you’re leaving a small apartment or a three-story house. Ahead of moving day, learn how to prepare for movers, who can take care of heavy-lifting and loading your moving vehicle for you.
Hire a local moving company to make moving easier and give you more time to take care of the other administrative details, such as changing your address or updating your accounts with your new location. No matter your situation, the guide can take you through how to best prepare for movers.
Before Moving Day
1. Make and Share Checklists
Before you start packing your things, consider making multiple checklists to complete before, during, and after moving day. Write down the tasks that need to be done throughout the moving process, from purging household items to buying packing supplies and confirming the moving date with your moving company.
This step can help you stay organized and ensure no detail goes unnoticed for an efficient and effective move. Consider sharing your moving-day checklist with your moving team ahead of time to ensure everyone is on the same page about tasks required.
In the weeks before the big day, create a separate pre-moving day checklist to help you prepare for the move. Some steps are important to complete long before the move, while others need to be scheduled in the weeks or days before movers arrive, so laying them out in a clear timeline is helpful.
2. Arrange for Child and Pet Care
The last thing you want on moving day is multiple pets or kids running around while movers try to load your refrigerator into the moving truck. Instead, hire a pet or kid sitter for the duration of the time the movers are working in your home. Securing care for little ones and fur babies can help moving day run more smoothly and safely.
3. Double-Check Your Moving Insurance
Moving insurance offers important coverage if something goes wrong with the move, like serious damage to your belongings or a lost truckload. You may not be able to get your items back, but you can recover a significant portion of their cost, making this an important feature for long-distance moves.
Moving insurance is usually bundled into the overall cost of hiring movers. Check your moving package and contract to make sure moving insurance is included. If it isn’t, ask how much moving insurance will cost. It’s usually between 1% and 5% of the total estimated value of your moved belongings.
4. Declutter Unnecessary Items
As you pack, you’ll run into various items you don’t want or need anymore. Many people choose to declutter unwanted clothes, used decorations, forgotten toys, used furniture, and seasonal items prior to moving.
Several weeks before your move, arrange a garage for items in good quality or make visits to local donation drop-off sites. Items you can’t sell or donate need a disposal plan, including a visit to a local landfill or renting a dumpster.
5. Remove Hazardous Items
There are several household items you can’t pack, including chemicals and substances that could corrode, cause damage to other items, or even explode. Research safe ways to dispose of supplies like household cleaners, motor oil, solvents, pressurized cans, paints and varnishes, and even fluorescent light tubes—among many other hazardous materials.
6. Make An Inventory List
As you prepare to close and tape up your moving boxes, make a clear inventory list of everything in the boxes and larger items that you need to move. The inventory list should include a description and the label on its box. Some people like to number or otherwise code their boxes and include that code on the inventory list, especially if there are many boxes (such as calling a kitchen box “Dishes K-1”).
The inventory list can help you organize boxes into the right rooms when the move is finished. It’s also very useful to have if you run into problems with the movers and lost belongings.
7. Arrange for Appliance Disconnects
Some appliances are difficult to move on your own, especially if you need to disconnect more complicated gas or water lines. If you don’t have experience in this area, don’t hesitate to ask your professional moving company about arranging disconnects when they transport appliances. There may be an extra charge for this task, but you won’t have to worry about it.
8. Clear a Moving Path
Even if most of your belongings are in boxes, some lingering obstacles, such as doors or electronics, can get in the way when your movers arrive. It’s best to completely clear out your space beforehand and form an unobstructed pathway from each room to the moving vehicle. Measure large furniture and doorways to ensure your bigger items can squeeze through, otherwise you may need to remove your doors.
You should pick up and pack any loose cords or electronics so you don’t put movers at risk of tripping or damaging valuable items. The same goes for appliances if you plan on taking any with you.
9. Pack Your Belongings
If you’re tackling packing yourself, you can start purchasing packing supplies and putting your things in boxes weeks before moving day to get as much of a head start as possible. Start with rooms or spaces you don’t spend as much time in, such as garages or guest rooms, and gradually make your way through the rest of your home.
If you hire a full-service moving company that will pack and unpack for you, prepare your items by organizing them in piles or areas that they can access easily. Packing services typically cost an additional $1,000.
10. Label Boxes Clearly
Make sure to mark any boxes with fragile items and label each box with its contents and which room they came from to make it easier for the movers. That way, they’ll know where to place each box when unloading all your belongings at your new home. Use a permanent marker or premade labels to clearly label at least two sides of each box. You can even create an inventory list to keep track of the contents of each box and label them using a numbered system.
11. Clean Your Home
Cleaning your home prior to moving will reduce the post-move out cleaning process. Consider hiring professional home cleaners that specialize in move-in and move-out cleanings and can give the entire house a deep cleaning from carpets to cobwebs. You can schedule this service after the move is complete and all boxes and furniture are gone. You can expect to pay between $120 and $420 for move-out cleaning services.
12. Keep a Bag of Essentials
Maybe you’re loading up your car and driving to your new place or hopping on a quick flight to get to your new home. Either way, you’ll want to set aside moving essentials to get you through the hours or days it takes for your movers to deliver your items. Essentials should include everything from important documents, such as your birth certificate, passport, or marriage license, to toiletries and several changes of clothes. You may also want to pack key items you’ll need as soon as you get into your new home, including a Wi-Fi router, plenty of snacks, plastic kitchenware, and cleaning supplies.
On Moving Day
13. Gather Valuables And Pack Them Yourself
Check the moving essentials that you set aside, and ensure they are boxed separately and ready for your car. Add particularly valuable items like jewelry or mementos to these essentials and pack them into your vehicle for the trip.
Pack valuable items yourself, or if they’re too large to fit in your personal moving vehicle, leave them out to provide instructions for the movers. Those items include fragile artwork, special electronics, and similar items.
14. Stay Onsite for Moving Day
Try to arrange your moving day schedule so you can stay onsite until the movers are done. Preferably, the person who contacted the movers and received the estimate should be there. However, if necessary, a friend or family member can take this role.
The monitor should watch and guide the movers, make sure large items are handled with care, and see if movers damage anything (like floors or walls) during the move. Otherwise, the point person can be on-hand to answer questions.
15. Get Cash for Tips
You should have cash on hand to tip your movers for a job well done once the truck is locked and loaded. If you’re not sure how much to tip movers, the general rule is $4 to $10 per hour, $10 for a half-day move, and $20 for a full-day move.
Even though you’re paying for movers to haul your things away, it’s also important to provide a hazard-free environment with a clean bathroom and access to water and snacks. These small gestures go a long way in making your moving crew feel valued and taken care of.
16. Conduct a Final Walkthrough
Before your movers arrive to start transporting your belongings, conduct a final walkthrough each room to search for left-behind items. Double check drawers, storage closets, and other spaces that could easily be forgotten.
17. Prepare Access for Others If Necessary
In many cases, before closing up the old home for good, you will need to arrange access for your real estate agent or the new homeowners. These steps could include leaving a key in a realtor box, contacting someone with a keypad code, or passing on the keys personally to someone else. If you are renting, you should contact the owner or management company and ask where to drop off the keys.
Melissa Graham contributed to this piece.
Frequently Asked Questions
You can’t start preparing for movers too soon. Some steps, like scheduling the movers and arranging for pet care, need to happen months ahead to fit into busy schedules, especially if you’re moving during on-season.
Several weeks ahead of the moving date, start packing lesser-used rooms and supplies. As the moving day gets closer, move your packing toward more and more essential rooms until only a few necessities are left on the day ahead of the move.
Professional movers use dedicated packing materials like specialty boxes for artwork, TVs, clothes and other things that need to be moved with care. If professional movers are packing for you, they use foam, bubble wrap, and other cushioning for the journey. You can ask questions about how movers will handle specific items when you are getting a price estimate.
Movers calculate a moving estimate through various methods, including flat fees, estimated weight, amount of space taken up in the moving truck, or a combination. Read the estimate carefully, including parts of the contract that cover mover liability, how and when movers arrive, and other information. The best estimates include an itemized list with fees for fuel, especially large items, packing and unpacking, storage services, and more.
Your moving budget depends on the distance you’re moving and how much DIY work you’re doing. Hiring professional movers can cost between $880 and $2,550 or more. You should also budget for common moving necessities, such as moving insurance, overnight hotel stays, gas, and more. Keep an emergency fund to cover last-minute expenses that occur during moving.