Moving day essentials

The box you open first

• Toilet paper. Two rolls. This is first for a reason.
• Hand soap and paper towels.
• A box cutter or scissors. You cannot open boxes with your hands.
• Your compact tool kit. Screwdriver, hex keys, pliers. The bed will need reassembling tonight.
• Phone chargers — one per person, plus a power strip.
• Bedding for one bed, made up or at least complete. You will not want to hunt for a pillowcase at 11pm.
• One towel per person.
• A change of clothes and basic toiletries, including any medication.
• Bin bags. You will generate a startling amount of cardboard and packing material.
• Cleaning basics — a cloth, spray, and a roll of kitchen towel. New places are rarely as clean as promised.
• Snacks and water. More than you think. Moving is physical work.
• A light bulb or two, and a small lamp if you are arriving in the evening.
• A plunger. Unglamorous, and the one thing you cannot improvise at midnight.

Carry these — do not load them

These go in your car or your bag, not in the van. If the van is delayed, stolen or opened at the wrong address, you still have them.

• Keys — new place and old, plus any copies
• The lease or deeds, and your ID
• Laptop and anything irreplaceable
• Medication, in its original packaging
• Jewelry and documents
• Chargers
• Cash or a card for the movers, parking, tolls and food
• The bag of furniture fittings — see below

The one tip that saves the most grief

When you take furniture apart, put every bolt, cam, dowel and allen key into a zip bag taped to the underside of that piece of furniture. One bag per item, labeled.

People instead throw all the fittings into one tub, which works right up until you are sitting on the floor at 10pm with sixty bolts of four similar sizes and no instructions. Tape the bag to the furniture and it arrives with the thing it belongs to.

Also: photograph each piece before disassembly, and photograph the back of any electronics before unplugging them. Five seconds each, and it answers every “which cable went where” question later.

Measure the route, not just the room

This is where moving day most expensively goes wrong. Furniture fits the room and does not get into the building.

1. Measure each large item: width, depth, height, and the diagonal.
2. Measure every doorway at the new place, and the narrowest point of each hallway.
3. Measure the stairwell — particularly any turn, which is the usual failure.
4. Measure the lift: door width, internal depth and height.
5. Check the parking situation. In some cities a moving van needs a permit, and a ticket or a tow will ruin the day.

A 25-foot tape measure with a magnetic hook lets you do all of this alone — see our tape measure picks.

A moving-day timeline that works

Before you hand the keys back

1. Photograph every room, empty and clean, with a timestamp. This is your deposit evidence and it is the single most valuable thing you will do that day.
2. Fill small nail holes. Three minutes and $4 of spackle — see our guide.
3. Refit anything original you swapped — the shower head, the toilet seat. You kept them in a labeled bag, which is why we keep saying to do that.
4. Take final meter readings and photograph the meters.
5. Clean the oven and the fridge. The two things that come up in every deposit dispute.
6. Check every cupboard, the loft, and behind doors. Something is always left behind.