It is being sold · B
When you are taking less
A downsize is two jobs wearing one date. There is a removal, which is straightforward, and there is a series of decisions about a lifetime of belongings, which is not. Running them as one exercise in a single week is why downsizing has the reputation it has.
Nobody should be deciding what to keep during the week they are moving.
How we run a downsize
Measure first, decide second
The single most useful thing you can do is get the dimensions of the new rooms and the doorways before deciding anything. Most downsizing anxiety is unfocused — a general sense that it will not fit — and dimensions turn it into a short, specific list.
Usually that list is shorter than expected. Three or four pieces are genuinely marginal and everything else is fine, and knowing which three changes the whole tenor of the process.
The undecided pile is legitimate
Most advice on downsizing is a variation of "be ruthless". It is bad advice delivered confidently. Ruthlessness in the week of a move produces decisions people regret, and regret about a disposed object is not recoverable.
So we make the undecided pile a real category with a real destination: listed storage. You decide about those things later, in the new house, with the rooms in front of you. Some of it comes out and some of it goes, and both are fine.
What long tenure does to a house
Pinner has a great many households who have been in the same semi for decades, and a house lived in for that long does not hold a house's worth of things. It holds the loft, the garage, the shed, and the accumulated contents of other people's clear-outs.
We survey those four before the rooms, because that is where a downsize is actually decided and where a quote actually moves.
Where things go if they are not coming
We are not a house-clearance company, an auction house or a valuer, and we will not pretend to be any of them. What we will do is tell you honestly which of those you need, in what order, and how the timings fit around the move.
Anything that is simply going is taken away through a licensed route. Anything that might be worth something goes to somebody qualified to say so, before it leaves the house rather than after.
The house is sold and you are taking less
Questions about the house is sold and you are taking less
01 How far ahead should we start?
Well ahead of the move, and in short sessions rather than a marathon. One room, one loft corner, one cupboard at a time is the pace that works; a single weekend of it is the pace that does not.
02 Should we sell things before or after the move?
Before, if you already know. After, if you do not. Shipping something to a smaller house in order to sell it there costs more than selling it here — but deciding under time pressure costs more again.
03 Can you store the undecided things?
Yes, and it is the core of how we run a downsize. Everything held is listed as it is loaded so you know precisely what is there when you come to decide.
04 Will you tell us what our furniture is worth?
No. We are movers, not valuers, and an off-hand opinion from a crew is worth exactly nothing. We will tell you who is qualified to look at it.
05 What about the paperwork and the photographs?
Those go with you rather than on the vehicle. We put it on the plan because in a house being emptied after decades, documents turn up in furniture with some regularity.
06 Is a bungalow move easier?
Usually, for the carrying. Not for the volume — single-storey houses in this area often have deep lofts and generous garages, and both fill up.
What is happening to the house you are in?
Sold, handed back, let out, cleared, or nothing settled yet. That answer plus the two addresses is enough for us to ask you something useful back.