The moving checklist that starts before the For Sale sign
Every moving checklist starts on the day you sell. Book the movers, forward the mail, transfer the utilities. Fine, except by then the hard part already happened, and nobody gave you a list for it.
Here is the part they skip: getting a house ready to list IS the first third of the move. Every closet you thin out for showings is a closet you will not pack later. Do it once, six weeks early, instead of twice in a panic.
Six weeks out: the declutter that doubles as packing
Go room by room with three boxes: keep, donate, and storage.
Keep stays in the room. Donate goes in the car the same day, because a donate box that sits in the hallway for a month is just clutter with a label. Storage is for the things you love that the listing does not need: the extra leaf for the table, the winter coats in April, the wall of family photos.
Yes, the photos come down. Not because your family is a problem, but because buyers stand in a room and try to picture their own life in it. Make the space quiet enough for them to do that.
Counters clear. Closet floors visible. If a room has a treadmill with laundry on it, the treadmill was storage all along, so store it.
At listing: live light for a few weeks
Showings mean strangers with twenty minutes and opinions.
Keep a single basket per floor for the daily scatter, and put the basket in the car during showings if you have to. Beds made, blinds open, lights on. It is annoying. It is also temporary.
Keep one drawer or bin per person for the things you actually need daily, so the tidying never touches your real life.
When it sells: the usual list, in order
Book movers or a truck the week the deal firms up, not the week you get the keys. End of month dates go first, and summer weekends in Canada go months out.
Then the address chain: Canada Post mail forwarding, your bank, your employer, the CRA, your provincial health card, your driver's licence, insurance on both houses until the overlap closes. Utilities get a transfer date, not a cancel date, and take a photo of every meter on moving day.
Schools if you have kids. Vet records if you have animals. The internet installer books out further than any of them, so call them first.
Moving week
Pack a first-night box per person: sheets, towel, charger, kettle, coffee, one pan. Label it loudly and put it in the car, not the truck.
The storage boxes you filled six weeks ago never got unpacked, which is the point. They go straight from the storage unit or the basement corner onto the truck, already labelled, already decided. Past you handled it.
Keep reading
For sellers
The home staging checklist, room by room
Every room in the house, in the order to do them: what to remove, what to rearrange, and what a photo actually notices.
For sellers
What to fix before selling your house (and what to skip)
The repairs buyers notice first, and the projects you should not start six weeks before listing.
For sellers
How to declutter before selling, without the panic
A calm order of operations for thinning out a house before listing: what goes first, where it goes, and how far is far enough.
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