Canada - British Expat Forum

Decisions, decision

What to take and what to sell? Know that TV's, cars, beds, tools etc should be sold, and I suppose all the small electrical items such as kettle, toaster, grill etc.

What is worth shipping? Would really like your thoughts as we will be trying to cram our 3 bed semi's worth into the smallest container we can

We narrowed it down to essentials and sentimentals.

In the end it all fitted into the back of a Grand Caravan with two trips to the shipping warehouse.

Basically clothes (kept all), all soft furnishings - cushions, bed linen, table cloths etc.

All shoes

Old school stuff, photos etc.

All else we bought over here.

Keep CDs... they are not as cheap as you would think they would be over here.

We did the opposite! We bought loads of stuff from the UK in a 20' container and I wish we'd bought a lot of the stuff we sold / gave away, yes most stuff is cheaper here, but when you think of starting from scratch trying to furnish a new home is a costly game. We had nearly a month with just the stuff in our cases, sleeping on airbeds and sitting on 2 kiddies deck chairs as our stuff got delayed in UK, Then your stuff turns up and WOW there's nothing quite like your own bed! We found having all the kids stuff from UK really helped them to adjust quickly too.
We paid 2000GBP for the container, door to door, we loaded it ourselves, with a few friends and paid a couple of guys to help unload in Ontario.
You can use your UK tv here, I just bought a cheap DVD/VCR and use that as the tuner, voltage converters are cheap as chips too.
For the shipping we used a company called JL Shipping, they are REALLY helpful.
Hope this confuses you more!

We did the same as caroline - because we were coming to winnipeg the traditional shippers indicated that our stuff could have taken months to get to us (apparently the further way from the port you are the longer it can take and especially so if you are not taking a whole container) We shipped by air as excess baggage - a couple of loads in the nitro, and it arrived 1 week after we did. (my back reminds me that it was 30 packing cases!)

Fortunately we have an investment property in the UK which we converted to a fully furnished let, with the remains of our UK furniture.

Obviously you do then need to replace a lot of gear - but then I found it quite cleansing to jettison a load of stuff that had been littering our closets for years. WE spent a year flogging stuff on ebay - it's amazing what people will buy (and take away from your house which is a bargain). For the most part we only kept what couldnt be replaced.

s

Hi...
Well I shall just even up the scores on the doors here!!!
We brought everything with us... we sold our washing machine tumble dryer and fridge/freezer, TV, hifi etc. But alot of our furniture was relatively new, so felt it would fit in here fine. To be honest we are glad we did as it is an expensive procedure to replace everything quickly.
Like squeekyclean, my sons stuff was great to open up and made him settle much more quickly having familiar belongings around him.
It felt like Christmas opening up all the boxes you hadn't seen for a month!!! The good thing is, if you find you have no need for it here, then you can easily sell it or dispose of , these Canadians love a good garage sale!!!
Gael

That is true we brought all the kid stuff over and even now when we visit relatives we still bring the odd thing back in a suitcase.

Hi all

Thanks for your input, decided we will take the beds (if we have the room) but looks like a mega ebay session is a-coming.

Can anyone recommend a moving firm for us please?

Thanks

Hi Ross family,
we had quotes from all the big movers, all between 4000-4750GBP, from Staffordshire to Ontario. If your prepared to load the container yourself you can save big bucks, we had a 20 foot container door to door and paid just 2000GBP, took maybe 2 hours to load/unload and we bought everything! [Advert removed - if that company wants to get business from here, then they're welcome to buy an advert. It's only £15 for 90 days.]

Hi - We got a 20ft container and brought everything except the electrical stuff. My husband sold all his power tools and now regrets this as our garage in Canada is wired for 220 volt. We also brought all the children's DVD's and got a DVD player here that plays UK DVD's. My husband has just converted our basement and put a UK 220 volt plug socket which is helpful for guests and our camera chargers. My advice would be to get as much as you can into the container. We paid £3500 with insurance that included packing in the U.K and unpacking in Canada, I think it was 8 weeks door to door.
Regards Samantha

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