How to plan a move in 8 weeks (the checklist with the quantities)

The eight weeks at a glance

The checklist has 7 phases and 35 items, each phase a set of things that belong together in time: what needs a booking comes first, what needs a box comes in the middle, what needs a key comes last. The Pro moving plan dates every phase from your moving day and ticks the items off; the first phase is free to read there.

8 weeks out: decide, book, sort

Everything in the first phase is a decision or a booking, because the two things that cannot be rushed are a mover with a free date and a landlord with notice in writing. The 5 items:

1. Decide movers or a rental truck: run the cost calculator with your real distance and get two or three written quotes.
2. Book the mover or the truck for the date; mid-week and mid-month dates are usually cheaper.
3. Walk every room with a notepad and list what goes, what is sold, what is given away and what is thrown out.
4. Start a folder for the move: quotes, the lease or the sale papers, the inventory, receipts.
5. If you rent, give notice in writing and read the deposit conditions.

The quote is the decision. Local US movers are priced by the hour for a crew sized to the home; over 100 mi the published long-distance range takes over. In the UK the figure is an average removal quote by house size, inc VAT (Bellhop, Average Cost of Local Movers in 2026, read 2026-09-20; HomeOwners Alliance, How Much Do Removals Cost?, read 2026-09-20).

Run the moving cost calculator with your real distance before you call anyone, so you know whether a quote is high. The 2-bedroom cost guide shows what stairs, a peak date and packing add, and the UK removals guide has every house size with a Luton van beside it.

6 weeks out: buy the boxes and start on the rooms you never use

The sort-out in week eight decides the count here: what is sold or given away is not packed, not carried and not paid for by the hour. Then buy the whole list at once, a few extra small and medium boxes for the last day, and pack the loft, the garage, the spare room, the books and the out-of-season clothes, the rooms whose boxes can sit sealed for six weeks without anyone missing them.

The box calculator adjusts the row for the people in the home, a big kitchen, an office, a garage or a wall of books, and totals the list once you type your supplier’s prices; the 2-bedroom box guide says which room each kind of box comes from.

4 weeks out: addresses, the big furniture and the living rooms

Tell the utilities, the bank, the insurers, the doctor and the schools the new address and the date; set up mail forwarding. Measure the doors and the stairs at the new place against the sofa, the wardrobe and the bed before moving day, not on it. Pack the living room and the bedrooms apart from what you use every day, and write the box number and the room on two sides of every box, because a stack shows only one side.

2 weeks out: confirm the date and pack the kitchen

Confirm the date, the time and both addresses with the mover or the rental desk, and ask what is not covered. The kitchen goes now apart from a few plates and a pan, the glassware in dish-pack boxes. Arrange the children and the pets for the day, take down what you are taking with you (curtains, shelves, light fittings), and defrost the freezer two days before if it is moving.

If you are renting the truck, this is the week to check the class. A 2-bedroom apartment is 4 furnished rooms and needs a 20 ft truck under the per-room rule; the truck size calculator shows every class with its trips, and the 3-bedroom truck guide has the chart for every home size.

1 week out: the first-night box and the last boxes

Pack the first-night box (kettle, cups, toilet paper, towels, sheets, chargers, medicines, tools, a change of clothes) and finish every other box except the last day’s. Put the inventory in the folder and a copy on your phone, clean as the rooms empty and photograph them for the deposit, draw cash for tips or helpers, and charge the phone and the drill.

Moving day and after

Walk the crew or your helpers through the house first: what goes, what stays, what is fragile. Heavy boxes go on first and low, furniture along the walls, the fragile boxes and the first-night box last. Tick every box off the inventory as it goes on and again as it comes off, read the meters at both ends, and lock up. Afterwards, unpack the first-night box, check every box against the inventory and report any damage to the mover in writing within their time limit, register with a doctor, and keep the folder until the deposit is back.

The Pro moving plan turns this into one printable document with your own numbers: the dated checklist, the box inventory, the shopping list, the cost summary and the truck, plus an Excel workbook whose formulas recalculate when you change an input.