Moving to-do list PDF: download it, tick it, week by week

The moving to-do list PDF is right below, and it comes by email

The moving list that actually helps is split by weeks: eight before, four, two, moving week, the day itself and the after. You ask for it right below: leave your name, email and mobile and the PDF lands in your inbox, ready to print and tick with a pen.

I'm Francesco, I founded Smoves, and I did the end-of-June move myself as an out-of-town student, boxes in my arms and exams still running. I wrote the list right there, standing in the middle of the room, with a pen that had vanished by mid-afternoon (we'll come back to it, the pen is the running thread of this post).

This article is the practical half of how to organize a move, where you'll find the big decisions and the calendar of deadlines. Here is the other half: what to do, and why in that particular week.

Things to do when moving: six stages, one idea each

A list of forty lines thrown down one after the other isn't a list, it's a threat. That's why the PDF is cut into six stages, and each has a single thing to keep in mind: the one that costs you most if you skip it.

The table is the map. The sections below open one stage at a time, with the reasons the PDF has no room to write.

Eight weeks before: the five lines that decide all the others

At the top of the list there are only a few lines, and they weigh as much as everything else. Set the date and a backup date. Read your lease to see how much notice the termination needs, and send it in writing. Decide who does the move. Measure the new place.

The backup date sounds like pessimism. It is, and that's why it works: end-of-month dates are the first to go, and anyone with a single date finds out they have none.

Measuring the new place is the line that saves a sofa. Doors, stairs, elevator, and the wall where you meant to put it: if the sofa doesn't fit through the landing, the wall stays an idea. The sofa usually comes out of it better than you do.

If you go with a moving company, ask for more than one quote and make sure they start from the same information: addresses, floors, elevator, furniture to dismantle. And if the new place isn't ready the day you leave the old one, the last line of this stage is booking storage for the gap in between.

Four weeks before: decide what comes with you

Now you walk through the home, room by room, list in hand. Every item goes into one of four boxes: keep, sell, give away, throw out. There is no fifth box called «I'll think about it»: it's «keep» that is afraid to say so.

In Milan, the bulky items you're not taking are collected by Amsa, by booking: the street pickup is free within certain limits: each piece up to 2.5 m and 50 kg, and one booking every 30 days (Amsa). That's why the line sits at four weeks and not two: the person collecting has less room in their calendar than you do.

Then the supplies: boxes in two sizes, tape, marker, wrapping paper. How to fill and close a box so it arrives whole is in the guide on how to pack your boxes. And the marker, I'm just saying, buy two: it's the first object to leave no trace.

From here you start packing, beginning with what you don't use: books, off-season clothes, knick-knacks. If there's no room in the street for the vehicle, it's also the moment to ask for a parking permit: the rules change from one municipality to another, and that paperwork isn't done the day before.

Two weeks before: the paperwork people forget

This is the boring stage, the one no move ever tells at dinner parties. And it's the one that, skipped, makes you find in March a bill for the home you left in September.

Electricity, gas and internet: ask for termination or transfer with the right date, and for activation in the new place. In an electricity takeover the supplier has 2 working days to pass on the request and the distributor another 5 to switch the supply on (ARERA): leaving yourself room isn't anxiety, it's arithmetic.

Your post moves with Poste Italiane's Seguimi service. Online, activation comes after 15 calendar days, at the counter within 5 working days; you pick 3, 6 or 12 months (Poste Italiane). Whoever asks on moving day gets the new post on the old doormat.

Then tell your bank, employer, doctor, subscriptions and couriers your new address. And eat down the freezer instead of doing a big grocery run: two weeks of pasta with whatever is in there is a diet, if you present it well.

One last line, a small one: photograph the cables behind the TV and computer before unplugging them. That evening, in the new place, the photo is worth more than any manual (and I have lost the pen to write it down, again).

Moving week: packing, numbers and a single box to open

In the last week you pack everything except one suitcase for the first days. On every box you write the number and the destination room, on the side: another box goes on top, and the lid is the last place anyone looks.

Furniture that won't fit through the doors gets dismantled, and screws and bolts go into a small bag taped to the piece itself. A bag left «somewhere» is a bag that isn't there at assembly, and you find out with the furniture in pieces in the middle of the room.

The fridge is defrosted and dried at least a day before: nobody enjoys water on the floor of the old home, and even less in the van.

Finally, the first-day box: chargers, toilet paper, soap, bedsheets, a knife, your documents. The first evening it's the only one you open, so write it big. With which pen, I don't know: if you find it, call me.

Moving day: meters, last walk-through, photos and keys

On the day itself the list gets shorter, and not by chance: the things to decide are over, what's left is to do. Read the electricity, gas and water meters and photograph them, in the old home and in the new one. The readings close the accounts of one and open the other's.

Do the last walk-through: wardrobes, cellar, balcony, behind the doors. Behind the doors there is always a coat hook looking at you like it was hoping you'd forgotten it.

Then photograph the empty rooms, one by one. They're the proof of how you left the place, and they matter if the security deposit is disputed. Only after that you hand over the keys and get the handover signed, with your documents, phone and wallet in your pocket, not in a box already on its way.

After the move: the change of residence has twenty days

The change of residence must be requested within twenty days of the move: the Italian registry regulation asks for the declarations «within twenty days from the date the facts occurred» (DPR 223/1989, art. 13, in Italian). The City of Milan repeats it on its own page (Comune di Milano, in Italian).

In the same stage you update the address on the car's registration document and close the waste tax of the old home, opening the one for the new place. Then you check the boxes against the list you wrote: a round that mostly exists to tick the last line.