How to organize a move: decisions, deadlines and tricks

The short answer

To organize a move, start from the day you hand back the keys and count backwards. Two months before, decide who does it and set the date; three weeks before, start packing; around moving day, close the paperwork that has a deadline: utilities, post, street parking permit, residence within 20 days. Your lease notice may need six months.

I founded Smoves in Milan in 2026, after doing the end-of-June move as an out-of-town student with boxes in my arms and exams still running. Today we pick up at home from Lecco to Pavia, and on Trustpilot our customers give us 4.4 out of 5.

This is the method: the decisions, the order and the real deadlines, with official sources. The tick-box list, line by line, is in the moving checklist, the practical sister of this post (the one who always remembers where she left the tape).

What to do when: the moving timeline

A move runs on two calendars. One is yours: when to fill the boxes, when to take the bed apart, when to give up in front of the cable box (the one with chargers for phones you haven't owned in years). The other belongs to someone else, the landlord, the energy supplier, the City, and it doesn't move because you're tired.

The table lines up the second one. Where the rule is the City's, it applies to Milan; if you move elsewhere, the same item almost always exists, with your own City's numbers.

The tick-box list lives in another post, on purpose

The timeline says when. The week-by-week moving checklist says what, line by line: from three weeks before to the first night in the new place, with the first-24-hours box and the mistakes that cost the most.

I'm not copying it here. Two identical lists on two pages are the surest way to lose both, like the two sets of keys that end up in the same box at every move.

If you want it on paper, there's the printable moving to-do list PDF, from eight weeks before to the day after: the version for the fridge door, until the fridge ends up in a box too.

On your own, with movers or halfway: the decision that comes first

Doing it yourself works when everything fits in one van, there's an elevator and you have at least two people free for half a day. Movers make sense with furniture to take apart, floors without an elevator or two homes far apart. Halfway means keeping boxes and packing for yourself, and having someone else do the loading and transport.

Whoever does it alone organizes three things: the vehicle, the arms, the time. The vehicle is rented, and what rental firms ask for (license, minimum age, credit card) is in the post on renting a van for your move. The arms are your friends, who have just one flaw: they return the favor in July, on a fourth floor with no elevator. Time is the one everyone gets wrong, and always on the short side.

Before choosing, measure the big furniture and the doors it has to get through. A wardrobe that came into the bedroom flat-packed won't leave it assembled, and finding out on moving day is the most expensive way to find out. Assembly instructions, by a law nobody wrote, hit the trash the week before you need them.

If you pick movers, compare quotes built on the same information: addresses, floors, elevator, furniture to dismantle. We also do moves, from Milan and the surrounding provinces, always on a free quote: pickup, dismantling and transport by our own team, and one contact from start to finish. It starts from the page on small moves in Milan; for a bigger home, see how we work as a moving company in Milan.

What a move costs depends on four things

A move is priced on volume, distance, floors without an elevator and dismantling. A serious quote asks for those four things before giving a figure; one that gives it without asking is guessing blind.

The items on the bill, what pushes it up and how to compare two quotes are in the post on how much a move costs.

What to get rid of before moving (the cable box included)

You clear out before packing, never after: what you haven't used in a year, furniture that won't fit in the new place, duplicate kitchenware, clothes waiting to come back into fashion. Everything left behind is one box fewer to buy, fill, carry down and open again.

The simplest method is three boxes: keep, give away, throw out. One room at a time, and the "I'll think about it" box doesn't exist: it's a "keep" box too embarrassed to say so.

The real test is the cable box. If it holds the charger of a phone you gave away three homes ago, that charger doesn't deserve a fourth move. (I know. I have one too, and I defend it.)

For furniture to throw out, Milan has Amsa's bulky-waste pickup: from the street it's free within weight and size limits, from your floor it's paid (Amsa). Book it early, because it's one booking every 30 days: the old sofa is in no hurry, you are.

How long before moving should you start packing?

Three weeks before, for a room or a small apartment; for a family home, give it a month. Start with what you won't use before the move: books, out-of-season clothes, ornaments. Kitchen and bathroom go last, in the final two or three days.

Starting much earlier helps less than it seems. After ten days among the boxes you're living in a warehouse, looking for the frying pan in a box marked "misc".

The exact calendar is in the checklist; how to close a box so it arrives in one piece is in the guide on how to pack your boxes.

Tips for a quick move: six habits that save hours

Quick doesn't mean rushed. It means nobody stops on moving day to look for something, which is how hours actually get lost.

• Write room and contents on the side of the box, not the top: another box goes on top.

• One color per room. With a red marker for the kitchen, whoever unloads knows where to go without reading.

• Take furniture apart the day before and seal screws and bolts in a bag taped to the piece itself, so they don't go off on a trip of their own.

• Photograph the cables behind the TV and router before unplugging them.

• Leave clothes on their hangers and slide a big bag over them from below: in the new place they hang up in one move.

• The cable box gets closed last, labeled "cables: do not open before Christmas".

If the two homes don't line up, your things can wait in storage

It happens more often than anyone plans: the old lease ends at the end of the month and the new place still has scaffolding, or the painter has discovered the walls needed three coats, not two.

In those weeks the furniture needs somewhere that isn't a relative's living room. We pick it up at home, keep it in the warehouse at a monthly rate for the square meters it takes up, and bring it back when the new place is ready: you book the redelivery when you need it and pay for it then. That's storage for your move in Milan.

The move then becomes two short trips instead of one long, desperate one, and you set the second when you actually know where the sofa goes. If the trip is just one, and short, we do it ourselves, like our small moves in Milan.

What I learned from a move in Florence: the date doesn't move

In June 2026 we picked up over 200 items from students, mostly around Bocconi, and nearly all in the same two weeks: there the date is set by the lease and the exam session, not by us. The move that taught me the most, though, wasn't even in Milan.

A customer from abroad writes to us: his son has to leave his place in Florence for the summer, on a date that can't move. Back then Florence wasn't a city we served: that time we organized it from Milan, and I decided to go in person.

The move happened on the right date. The lesson for anyone organizing one is this: the date is the one thing that doesn't move, so everything else is built around it, with some slack for the unexpected.