With the holidays behind us, many area homeowners are now turning their eyes toward 2025 plans for the New Year.
For many Lowcountry homeowners that means planning out a whole home move – a large project for any size home, but particularly challenging when you’re moving a home that’s larger than 2,000 square feet.
If you’ve got a home that size you likely understand that moving everything in your home is going to be a huge task.
More rooms, spaces, furniture, appliances, fitness equipment, tools, clothing, boxes — pretty much everything you can think of moving a smaller home, just much more of it.
Not properly planning out a move of that size means added stress, anxiety, panic and potentially missing/damaged items due to the rush that comes with less planning.
If you’re charting out a course for a large home move in the Lowcountry it can be a challenge to know where to start.
Lucky for you, you’ve visited the blog of one of the best, most experienced local moving companies in the Lowcountry.
Below is a checklist you can start with to get started with your large home move in the Charleston area:
1. Start With A Timeline
Likely the starting point for any properly handled move, it’s important that you lay out a timeline for your move.
Identifying milestone dates & deadlines for marking things off of your list is crucial and helps you avoid the last minute moving panic.
For larger moves you’re going to want some runway – starting this process 3-4 months ahead of time will help you stretch out your checklist items and give you plenty of time to cover your bases.
2. Make A List Of All Spaces – Room By Room In Your Current Home (And Any External Buildings)
Going through your home’s interior spaces and exterior buildings, create a list of all rooms, closets and any other areas where there’s items that need to be packed & moved.
This helps ensure no space gets missed during your packing process and helps you created an inventory of items (see number 4 below).
3. Make A List Of All Spaces – Room By Room In Your NEW Home
Something that might get missed — going through your NEW home or residence and creating a list of spaces.
This will help you with the unpacking process and for directing your movers on where to place items during the end of your move.
4. Inventory Your Household Items By Room
With all of your spaces mapped out, make a definitive list of items for each room. This will help you make sure nothing gets missed in the moving process and can help you with number 5 below.
5. Decide What To Keep, Donate, Throw Away or Send To Storage
With your inventory at hand, you can now go through your entire list and decide on what to keep, donate, throw away or send into storage.
Moving can be a helpful way to “declutter” — eliminating nonessential items from your home and saves you time from having to move those items during your move.
6. Reach Out To Your Preferred Local Moving Companies, Gather Quotes
Now with your inventory at hand, you have your definitive list of items to move — something that will help your moving company determine a price for your move.
The more detailed item list you can offer to your moving company, the better they can estimate time, manpower, vehicles and other moving equipment for your move.
This will help you avoid any unnecessary time & surprises during your move (which can save you money).
7. Pack Up Your Low-Use Rooms & Outdoor Spaces
With your moving companies engaged, you can now start packing up your low-use rooms — rooms that aren’t generally utilized during your day-to-day activities.
Guest bedrooms and bathrooms, closets, utility cabinets, garages, storage sheds — any place you don’t normally use in your daily routine.
9. Confirm/Book Your Local Movers (And Coordinate Storage, If Needed)
With your packing process started you can go ahead and start booking your move with your preferred choice of mover.
By starting the packing process beforehand, you can let them know about any extra items you may have missed during your initial assessment.
10. Start Packing High-Use Rooms & Spaces
With your movers booked and timeline set, now you can start packing up your high-use rooms — rooms that you need for daily living.
Try not to pack up any everyday items like your toothbrush, comb/brush or any other items you might need, however (see number 12 below).
11. Disassemble Furniture & Prep Larger/Heavier Items
If you have furniture that can be disassembled, like tables, beds or chairs now’s the time to start prepping those.
For the larger/heavier items, it’d be a good time to wipe them down and clean them so you don’t have to do that after you unpack in your new home.
12. Moving Day: Pack Up Items Needed For Transition Living
Make sure and keep a “transition” or overnight bag separate. A transition bag is something you might keep your daily essentials in – toothbrush, comb/brush, contact solution, etc.
This will help you during your transition to your new home and keep you from having to go through all of your boxes to find those items as you’re moving in.
13. Let Your Movers Do Your Heavy Lifting
With all of your rooms accounted for, your large & light items packed & prepped for your movers, when they arrive they’ll be all set up to make a seamless move possible.
14. Use New Home Room By Room List To Direct Movers
With the list of rooms you made in step 3, once you arrive at your new destination you’ll be able to direct your movers on where to place everything.
15. Take Your Time Unpacking
With a large home, there’s a good chance you’ll be unpacking for a while.
As you start unpacking, however, remember you can take your time — start with rooms that are most essential for day-to-day living: your kitchen, bedrooms and bathroom.
Then you can move on to other spaces that are not as vital to your daily routine: guest bedrooms, closets, garage, etc.
As you start planning your move, there’s a good chance you might add a few additional items to this list, so feel free to customize this for your particular needs.
However, this list is a great way to get started with mapping out your large home moving needs.
As always, we’re here to help you chart your next moving journey in 2025.