Weeks, not weekends
The workable rhythm is simple: the decisions happen across weeks, and only the lifting happens on a day. We start with a walk-through, room by room, and sort the house into three honest piles: going, staying behind for family or sale, and still-deciding. The still-deciding pile is allowed to exist. It shrinks on its own once it has a name, and nobody makes good decisions about forty years of shelves under a deadline.
Cartons arrive early and the packing happens in visits, an afternoon at a time, hard rooms first. You keep living in the house throughout; it just gets gradually lighter around you.
The piano, the cedar chest, the things that can't be bought twice
Every long-held home has a shortlist of pieces the whole move is really about. They get named in the plan, wrapped before they leave their rooms, and carried by the crew's steadiest pairs. Pianos move with proper equipment on a planned route through the house, never on improvisation. Artwork and mirrors travel boarded and upright. Whatever is fragile is never at the bottom of anything, in the truck or in the plan.
The receiving end has rules too
Downsizes rarely land somewhere simpler. Apartments have lift bookings and moving windows; villages and care residences have arrival hours and a person whose job is to enforce them. Tell us where the move lands and we fold the receiving end's rules into the schedule from the start, so the day ends as calmly as it began.
What the final week should feel like
- The packing is finished except the kitchen kettle-kit and the bed you're sleeping in
- You know the day's sequence: which rooms empty first, when the piano goes, when the beds break down
- The new home has a furniture plan you've already agreed, wall by wall
- One person owns the job and you have their name; it's the same name from the first callback
If the final week feels like a sprint, the plan was wrong three weeks earlier. That's the honest test, and it's the one we schedule against.
Downsizes are charged at the same hourly rates as every other move: most run 4 movers + 2 trucks at $500/hr for the main day, with packing visits at the smaller crew rates. Spreading the work does not multiply the cost; it moves the same hours to calmer days. Details in crew sizes & rates.
