The Craftiest Workshop

I feel that I am somewhat of an moving expert after moving eight times with seven of those moves involving buying and/or selling a house. With posting season fast approaching, I thought I would share some tips and suggestions of things that have worked for us. For those of you non-military types, posting season starts in Jan/Feb when you hear rumors that you might be posted and goes until summer when you actually end up moving. We still get itchy feet at the beginning of the year and contemplate moving.

Our 2014 load day on the day of Jonathan’s prom.

The Sale

When you plan to put your house on the market

• deep clean each room and closet. Give each space at least a half day.
• in the kitchen, reorganize drawers and cupboards to look neat and clean
• everything extra, anything personal and anything broken or weird looking gets boxed. You want people to see their stuff in your space not your stuff in your space
• organize closets grouping items by color and evenly space hangers. Box up some clothing to give the impression of a spacial closet.
• wash walls removing marks with magic eraser, wash floors, shampoo rugs
• designate a room or storage area for all the extra stuff and neatly stack it there.
• add some green to the bathrooms and kitchen; a succulent or small plant
• put air fresheners in each room, plug in or gel cones
• if leaving out kitchen tools, only leaving out two colours black/white, red/white, wood/black.
• add a bowl of green apples or lemons to your table or counter top. Anything added as a splash of colour should be in odd numbers…..better Fung Shui

Call the Real Estate Agent

• pick an agent whose name is well recognized. Prominent agents have buyers. They will evaluate your house and compare to recent sales of similar houses and others in the neighbourhood.
• once you agree to list with them, they will take photos and/or video
• if they offer free staging, take them up on it. Every little bit helps. Sometimes they will lend a rug or furniture to fill a space if it helps to sell the house.
• you will get a lockbox for your door so buyers can see the house with an agent.

Showing your house

• never stay home during a showing. Potential buyers will want to ask questions that you should not be answering.
• never turn down a showing. 9pm, during supper and Saturday morning at 9am are not unusual requests.
• keep the house showing ready so you only have to do touch ups. Empty garbage cans daily (I remove garbage cans from every room except kitchen and bathrooms). Do a load of everyone’s laundry every day or other day. Swiffer, sweep and spot wipe the floor every evening. Wash and dry dishes as they are dirty.
• for a showing, straighten towels, dry and plug sinks, make beds and smooth blankets. If showing is last minute (we have had 1/2 hr notice), put any laundry into the washer and any dirty dishes into the dishwasher.
• if you know about a showing in advance, bake some cookies or bread. Walking into a house that smells like fresh baking makes people feel good. Sometimes I would leave some of those cookies and bottled water out for the potential buyers especially if the showing was around a meal time. Military families looking for houses may see ten houses in a day and don’t necessarily stop for meals. They will remember your house this way too because of that gesture.

The Buy

Finding the house

• once you know or strongly believe you will be moving, start searching for the house on Realtor.ca. For our last few moves, we have been able to pretty much pin down the house we ended up buying.
• make a list with three columns: must haves, would likes and don’t want. This will assist a realtor to rule out properties and not waste your time. We must have a big garage or shop, we would like a laundry tub and we do not want a sink in the kitchen island….for example. If you haven’t moved in awhile, husband and wife should do separate lists then discuss and combine the two lists.
• if you find a house you like online, check Google earth to see if there are any negative landmarks nearby like a busy highway, railway tracks or a potash mine.
• have a price range in mind realizing that realtors will most often show you houses at the top end of the price range or slightly over. They want a bigger commission if possible.

Looking at houses

• to save yourself time, walk out as soon as you know it is not what you want. We have walked into houses that smelled like mold, strong cigarettes or cat urine; if you buy one of those, you will need to repaint, replace carpets etc. Another house we saw was beautiful inside and out but one side of the house had sunk and you felt drunk, listing sideways as you walked inside of it.
• always measure spaces instead of eyeballing. If your furniture needs to fit a space, make sure you have those measurements ahead of time. The example realtors often give is “grandma’s antique hutch that has been in the family for years”…very big and weighs a ton. If furniture needs to go downstairs, is there room to get around corners etc. Sometimes queen mattresses or a sectional couch won’t fit.
• when narrowing down your choices, try to view a house the second time between 4-6pm. This allows you to possibly see your neighbours, ask them questions, see if they have kids or loud pets and see how busy the street is.
• if you have children in school, arrange for a school tour for them to get them acquainted with the surroundings. Once you have finalized the purchase, you can even enroll them so bring along copies of immunization, baptism certificate(parent for Catholic school), birth certificate and health card.

Up until the purchase of this house, we always had only two days to look at houses before we had to put an offer on a house. The inspection would be done in a couple days, financing organized and the house was bought by the end of the week. Knowing what you want in advance, how much you want to spend and what area you want to be in can really help.

The Move

Packing

• if you are packing yourself, save newspaper well in advance. A few sheets of newspaper is just a sturdy as the packing paper moving companies use.
• box up smaller items into shoe boxes or large ziplocks bags to keep things from the same room together. We do this even when someone else is packing us. We have had wax crayons dumped in with pillows.
• pack the things that are not day to day use items ahead of time. Extra towels, blankets, clothing, dishes etc.
• find out what the movers will not take and put those items in a tote. We always take these items in the vehicle with us so we don’t have to repurchase everything. Alcohol, batteries, aerosols, coins, gas can with gas, lighters, paint, nail polish remover, plants or ammunition.
• create a list of all electronics and appliances with serial numbers. Movers will require this and will need to certify that these items are working before packing. Keep this list in your move notebook (see below) and you won’t have to recreate it each time your move.
• take pictures of each room and valuable items before they are packed. If something goes missing, you will have proof that it was there before the packers started.
• keep with you a broom and dustpan, a roll of toilet paper in at least two bathrooms, a pail and rags, cleaning solution, and a borrowed vacuum. You can clean a room as soon as the movers have emptied it.
• keep a small bog of tools for reassembling beds, tables etc.
• designate an area of the house to place items that will not be packed and tell all the packers. Clothes for the trip, cooler, items they won’t take etc.

• ask a neighbour if they will take your left over condiments
• make a meal plan for the last few weeks with the leftover contents of your fridge and freezer. Try to use up as much as you can.
• fill a briefcase with important documents such as passports, birth certificates, housing documents and insurance papers. Add to it important family photos and momentos. These should come with you in your vehicle.
• create a notebook with names, account numbers and phone numbers of utilities, phone, tax office, realtors, assessors, building inspectors etc. We staple business cards in as we receive them. This gives you a list of contacts for reference and any future issues. Have a section for electronic and appliance serial numbers. Our move notebook just gets added to each move. On the inside cover record the address of each house and phone number at the time. We have been using this book since our second move.

• you can call the utility companies as soon as you have a possession date and move out date. They will put it in the system to have final reading done on those days. I usually wait until a month before to set it up. These days you can probably do most of it online.
• don’t forget to change your address for any credit cards, investment brokers, banks, point cards and magazine subscriptions
• set up mail forwarding with Canada Post. One year is usually a good amount of time.

The Load

• if you have movers, buy a case of water, box of doughnuts and some pizza for lunch. A fed and watered crew will be more careful and efficient.
• if you have more “building materials” than you are allowed based on the moving contract there is a loophole. Ask the driver if they would be willing to take extra building material in the belly compartment of the truck if you assist with the bundling and loading of it.
• if you have a pet and they can be at the groomers or kennel for the day, do so. They also get stressed and think they are going to be left behind.

• if you have small children, find someone to watch them for the day
• if the driver of the moving truck leaves tire gouges in a neighbour’s lawn while positioning the truck, try to be mediator (yes, this happened to us)
• if you have children in elementary school, ask their teacher to write a letter to your child’s future teacher describing strengths, weaknesses, personality etc. Get them to seal it in an envelope. This will help the new teacher understand how they will fit in and whether they will need extra support or not.

Travel to destination

• bring a small cooler with food at least for the first day. If you can get motel rooms with a fridge, I would recommend stopping at grocery stores and buying food to piece together lunches. It is way cheaper than always resorting to fast food.
• create a snack bag for each person. This would have snacks they like and should allow for at least two snacks per day. You won’t need to buy expensive gas station snacks along the way.
• make sure everyone brings their own water bottle. Fill them up daily before leaving the motel.
• every time you stop for the night, bring everything in from your vehicle. On one move from Ontario to Alberta (2004), we stopped in Winnipeg overnight. We parked in the hotel parking lot and it was raining cats and dogs. We just left everything in our van. The next morning we realized that it was broken into. They stole our VHS TV, movies and our briefcase of important documents.

Unload and unpack

• boxes these days will have a label on them saying which room it came from in the house you left. You have to decide where that box goes in the new house and direct the person carrying it. We find that having one person stay at the door and do this, keeps things moving.
• if you have people unpacking for you, have them do the kitchen because there are breakables. You almost need two people putting things away because they unpack onto counters and your table quicker than you can figure out where to put it.
• As long as all the boxes are accounted for, don’t bother having them unpack anything else unless you think something might be damaged. They just take things out of boxes and leaves piles everywhere. If a box is missing, you may want everything unpacked so you can try to figure out what was in it.
• If you do unpack for yourself, don’t rush. It can be exhausting. When unpacking yourself, open every box if you had packers. You will find the oddest things packed together. This will save you looking for a certain dish at Christmas and it is nowhere to be found. One move we couldn’t find my favourite vegetable tray. It was stuck in a box from the garage.
• try to hang pictures within the first month or they may never get hung.
• find things to get involved in the your new community as soon as possible. This will help the feeling of missing your old friends, community groups and school friends.

I know many of you reading this may not be moving… ever, but you may know someone that is moving or moves often. Please share this post with them as you really can only learn some of it by moving over and over again.