# Packing advice needed please!



## Khrissy (Jan 7, 2016)

We are about to start packing the house for our move to Andalucia. The boxes are in the garage and the task feels daunting! Before I start, I wondered if I could pick the brains of those of you that have done this before us? Anything you wish had done/not done would be very much appreciated. As I write this, I'm looking out of the window at yet another grey rainy day. Can't wait to join you all!


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## extranjero (Nov 16, 2012)

Khrissy said:


> We are about to start packing the house for our move to Andalucia. The boxes are in the garage and the task feels daunting! Before I start, I wondered if I could pick the brains of those of you that have done this before us? Anything you wish had done/not done would be very much appreciated. As I write this, I'm looking out of the window at yet another grey rainy day. Can't wait to join you all!


Be ruthless, give stuff to friends, charity etc 
Keep only what you can't live without
Don't send furniture, except small prices of sentimental value
Don't send white goods- just as cheap in Spain now
We had a garage sale, raised a few pounds
Take winter clothes with you, it does get cold and damp in winter
If you ever return to UK, reverse process!


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

I agree with being ruthless, unless you know you are going to have plenty of room to put everything when you arrive. We bought over 60 boxes of books and CDs, and had to line all the walls with shelves (thank God for Ikea). Now they sit gathering dust. I can't even give them away, everything is digital. We could have cut it down to ten or 20 boxes....

One bit of furniture I'm glad we did bring is our king-size bed, memory foam mattress, and English-size pillows. I never could get on with continental squares or sausages.


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## Simon22 (May 22, 2015)

We ripped CD's and DVD's to PC (multiple backups).
We kept some boxed sets but every single CD went to charity and saved a heap of space.
Also software keep the DVD's and licences but throw the boxes away.
I don't know if this is well known but my wife packs everything inside something else. 
When we first moved I didn't see this process and it was like playing Russian dolls trying to find something, but it does save space. Also linen and clothes can be packing rather than using bubble wrap and then packing the clothes.


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

Simon22 said:


> We ripped CD's and DVD's to PC (multiple backups).
> We kept some boxed sets but every single CD went to charity and saved a heap of space.
> Also software keep the DVD's and licences but throw the boxes away.
> I don't know if this is well known but my wife packs everything inside something else.
> When we first moved I didn't see this process and it was like playing Russian dolls trying to find something, but it does save space. Also linen and clothes can be packing rather than using bubble wrap and then packing the clothes.


Some good packing ideas there Simon!

I digitised the music after we'd moved - didn't have time beforehand, I was still working. Same with photos. We did throw away about 300 vinyl albums though. The guys at the local tip were on them like a pack of vultures.


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## Simon22 (May 22, 2015)

Alcalaina said:


> Some good packing ideas there Simon!
> 
> I digitised the music after we'd moved - didn't have time beforehand, I was still working. Same with photos. We did throw away about 300 vinyl albums though. The guys at the local tip were on them like a pack of vultures.


I forgot the photos, yes scan them in as well. You can scan multiples at once and the software can break them back up (OSX and Debian)


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

We took the complete contents of our three bedroomed cottage when we moved to Prague in 2005. Everything...furniture, clothes, books, CDs, china, bed linen, pictures (the sort you hang on walls), ornaments..

When we arrived at our first home in Prague and arranged our things we found quite a few superfluous items, given to local charities and friends (Alca, I regret giving my Czech dissident friends my CPGB issued copy of 'The Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism-).
Then we moved to a bigger house and got rid of more things.

After three years we moved with all our furniture etc.to Andalucia. We moved to an apartment, big mistake but got rid of more stuff. Then we moved to the house we've been living in for eight years, got rid of more stuff.
We still have a few things in the cellar but we'll get rid of them soon as we're sure we haven't missed having them around.

It has cost a lot to shift our stuff around Europe but the furniture etc. is 'good', we've had it for a long time and we like having familiar things around us. We found it easier to discard stuff as we went along, rather than do it in the UK and then in Prague or Spain find ourselves saying 'I wish we'd kept that'.

In the end it's down to individual taste. I would however advise you use a good, well-known removal company. The one we used to bring our stuff from Prague to Andalucia, AEG, was superb. They wrapped and packed everything for us, apart from our underwear which they delicately suggested we might prefer to do ourselves.
We liked that...
It took them two days to pack, we spent the night at our friend's house while they did it, they cleaned the house once they'd finished and carefully unpacked all our stuff here, taking all unwanted boxes and wrappings with them.


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## The Skipper (Nov 26, 2014)

Khrissy said:


> We are about to start packing the house for our move to Andalucia. The boxes are in the garage and the task feels daunting! Before I start, I wondered if I could pick the brains of those of you that have done this before us? Anything you wish had done/not done would be very much appreciated. As I write this, I'm looking out of the window at yet another grey rainy day. Can't wait to join you all!


We used professional packers (Pickfords) to clear our house in the UK. They turned up on the afternoon of the day before the appointed time, supposedly just to have a look, but then decided to start loading! Before we knew it the house was empty. Problem was, because we hadn't expected them, they took a desk with a drawer full of paperwork, including our route plan through France and Spain! They also took all my shoes and I had to drive to a 24-hour Tesco store in my carpet slippers to buy a pair to drive to Spain in! Make sure you keep all essential documents and other important items to hand so there is not a last minute panic as you get ready to set off!


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## Khrissy (Jan 7, 2016)

Thanks guys, some useful tips there!


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## extranjero (Nov 16, 2012)

I couldn't bear the thought of putting all my photos and CDs onto the computer
There are so many
The CDs now all sit in a neat cupboard not taking up much room
Threw away cassettes except own recorded sentimental ones
Vinyls can be worth a lot,so check
Charity shops benefitted a lot when I came back, and I sold a lot
It was comforting , knowing it wasn't only me who had untouched boxes sitting there, gathering dust for years!


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## Lynn R (Feb 21, 2014)

We threw away whole drawers full of photographs and can't say we have missed them! OH had a huge vinyl collection, which he whittled down to a few boxes of favourites to bring with him, sold some and the rest went to a nephew of his who had them shipped over to Kuala Lumpur where he was working at the time (his employer paid, luckily!).

We didn't bring any furniture as we were moving to what had been our holiday home and we'd already fully furnished it. I sold some antique pieces at auction and the rest we sold with the house, included in the sale price, even down to the cutlery and crockery.

Strangely enough our removal people turned up a day early to collect our stuff too, we had to tell them to come back in a couple of hours as we were still finishing the packing. We did it ourselves and nothing got broken or went missing, thank goodness. I numbered each box and wrote a room location and brief description of the contents on each label so we'd know what was in them and where they were to go when we arrived, and made a list of the boxes with a copy for me and one for the removal company, and ticked off each box as they were carried into the house to make sure they were all present and correct.


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## extranjero (Nov 16, 2012)

I could never throw away photos of family and special occasions, unless they were duplicates or blurred
What annoys me is if something is packed without its cable or charger, or mixing stuff like an ornament packed inside a mixing bowl
The packers told me they have been to houses, and taken a bread bin full of bread and a pedal bin full of rubbish( not to Spain, obviously)


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## bob_bob (Jan 5, 2011)

extranjero said:


> Be ruthless, give stuff to friends, charity etc
> Keep only what you can't live without
> Don't send furniture, except small prices of sentimental value
> Don't send white goods- just as cheap in Spain now
> ...


Good post.

Re: Music, when I buy a CD I rip it to my home network. Its an extensive collection built up over the years and its around 125GB which is about 21,000 individual tracks; whenever I travel I can take my full music collection with me, its fantastic.

Same with electronic books (which are tiny in terms of file size compared to music files), less than 1GB in size for about 1000 books. Ebooks will never replace paper for me, but its a great option when away from home.


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## Madliz (Feb 4, 2011)

Take a photo of cabling, like for TVs, PCs, printers, etc., so you can easily set everything up again on arrival


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## Simon22 (May 22, 2015)

extranjero said:


> I couldn't bear the thought of putting all my photos and CDs onto the computer
> There are so many
> The CDs now all sit in a neat cupboard not taking up much room
> Threw away cassettes except own recorded sentimental ones
> ...


Photos get more looked at on the computer as they are sorted by date and available over the network. We can view them on our phones as well as the computers.
Music also gets more use as the same applies, within reach of our Wifi we can access any music we have ever bought with any device instantly.


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