DIY move or removal company: how to decide

The question always comes in the same form: is it better to call a removal company or to do it yourself? Put like that, it has no answer, because it compares an expense with something that has no price written down anywhere, which is your own work.

Reworded, it works better: how much work is there really in this move, and which part of that work can you do yourself without wrecking the new home, your back or your week?

Doing it yourself is not free, it is paid for differently

The first mistake is comparing a removal company's quote with zero. Doing it yourself has a bill of its own, and these are the items on it:

• the van hire, plus fuel and any tolls
• the permit to reserve the parking space outside the building, where one is needed
• the packing materials, which have to be bought and then disposed of
• the people who help you, paid in money or in favours to be returned
• your hours, including the days of leave you take to do it
• the risk: a chipped piece of furniture, a broken pane of glass, a scuffed wall

The last two items are the ones that get forgotten, and they are often the biggest. A move done on your own takes up the whole weekend, almost always the Friday as well, and on Monday evening the new home is still not fit to live in. If you take three days of leave to do it, those three days are part of the price.

The five things that decide for you

Look at them before you ask for quotes. If three out of five go against you, the discussion about doing it yourself is almost closed.

The floor and the lift. This is the variable that weighs most of all. Two flights of stairs by hand change the time of every single trip, and that time gets multiplied by the number of items. A lift the sofa does not fit in counts as having no lift: measure the car (width, depth, height of the door) and check whether the door opens outwards, because that eats up useful space on the landing.

The real volume. Do not count it by rooms, count it by bulky items: wardrobes, sofas, beds, washing machine, fridge, bookcases. Boxes take up space, but you carry one in each hand. It is the big pieces that decide whether you need a van with a tail lift and two people who have done it before.

The furniture that has to come apart. A bridge wardrobe built over the bed, a made-to-measure walk-in wardrobe, a fitted kitchen: these are jobs for tools and experience, not for goodwill. If you have three pieces like that at home, the DIY move gets a day longer, and it often ends with a panel or two that will not go back where it came from.

The distance. Within the same city you can make two or three trips with a small van, and the sums shift in your favour. Outside the province there is one trip only, so the van has to hold everything first time, and getting the size wrong means leaving things behind.

The time window. If you have two weeks in which both homes are yours, you move in stages and doing it yourself becomes realistic. If you hand back the keys to the old home on the same day you collect the keys to the new one, you need speed, and speed is bought with extra pairs of arms.

When the removal company is almost always the right choice

There are cases where you do not even need to do the sums.

A piano, a safe, a large aquarium, a marble table: they are moved with specific equipment, and people who have moved them before know where to take hold of them and in what order to move them. A sofa that will not go down the stairs and has to go out of the window on a furniture hoist is another closed case, because that is not a service you improvise.

Then there are personal circumstances. A back that has already given trouble, a pregnancy, a recent operation, a parent to look after in the same period. Doing it yourself assumes a body in good shape for two days in a row, and that part does not appear in any quote.

Last case: when time is very short. With a few days' notice a removal company turns up with two or three people and finishes loading in a morning. On your own, with the same notice, you will not get there.

When doing it yourself holds up

It works if the big pieces are few and easy to take apart (a slatted bed, modular shelving, no built-in wardrobes), the home is on a low floor or the lift is a good one, you are staying in the same city and you have a window of several days.

It also holds up if you really do have three or four people. Not two who offer and then one drops out on Saturday morning: three confirmed, with the right shoes, available all day. With only two people every heavy piece becomes a negotiation, and everything takes twice as long as you had planned.

There is one drawback to allow for even in the best case: someone who helps you for free is not answerable for what they break. That is one more reason to keep the two or three pieces you are really attached to out of the DIY part.

The middle way, which almost nobody considers

Between doing everything and having everything done there is the carrying and transport only service: you pack the boxes yourself, calmly, in the weeks before. They arrive on moving day, take apart what needs taking apart, load, drive and unload into the right room.

For most house moves it is the solution that makes the most sense, because it splits the work between whoever does each part best. Packing boxes is slow but not difficult, and nobody knows better than you what goes with what. Carrying a wardrobe down from the third floor is difficult, and one afternoon's experience does not make it easy.

If you choose this route, bear in mind that the carrier's bill depends on the time their crew spends in your home. Boxes that are closed, labelled and gathered near the door shorten that time. Boxes left half open stretch it, and they stretch it at your expense.

How to read a quote

Two quotes can only be compared if they say the same things. Before you look at the figure at the bottom, check that it states:

• the estimated volume and how it was estimated (a survey at your home, a video call, or a couple of questions on the phone)
• how many people are coming and for how many hours
• whether packing is included and which kind: furniture only, or crockery and pictures too
• whether dismantling and reassembly are included, and for which pieces
• who deals with the parking permit and who pays for it
• whether a furniture hoist is needed, and whether it is already included or is an extra
• the number of floors at both ends, which is the item that pushes the bill up when it comes out later
• how your goods are covered in case of damage, with what limit and what excess
• the date and the time slot, not just the month
• whether the figure is with or without VAT

A quote that fits in three lines is not simpler, it is less defined: everything that is not written down becomes an extra on moving day, when your furniture is already on the van and you have no room left to negotiate.

Ask for a survey, even just by video call. Anyone who gives you a number without having seen what they have to move will change that number.

How your things are covered

Doing it yourself shifts the whole risk onto you. If the television falls down the stairs, it falls, and that is that. With a removal company the damage is still possible, but there is someone to talk to about it, and that only works if you sorted it out beforehand.

Ask in writing how the cover works, what it excludes and how to report damage. Then do your part: photograph the valuable pieces before they are packed, with their condition clearly visible. A photo taken on the morning of loading is worth more than any argument afterwards.

The same goes for the home you are leaving, if you rent. Photograph walls and floors with the rooms empty, before the first trolley comes in. Those photos are for you, when you hand the keys back.

Apply for the parking permit in advance

A space to stop the van outside the front door is not a detail, it is the difference between carrying the boxes five metres or fifty. You apply for it to the comune, the local council; it takes time to be issued, and the rules differ from city to city. Many city centres also have access limits and set hours for loading and unloading.

As soon as you have the date, do two things: check on your comune's website how to apply for temporary occupation of public land (occupazione temporanea di suolo pubblico), and ask the removal company whether they take care of it. If they do, that is one less thing to manage. If they do not, it is an item that goes on the DIY bill.

The materials weigh on the decision more than they seem to

If you do it yourself you buy boxes, tape, bubble wrap and marker pens, and you end up with cardboard to get rid of in a home where you do not yet know where things go in the bins. If you call a removal company you often pay for packing as a separate item, and you pay for it even when you could have done it yourself the week before.

There is a third way, and that is renting the boxes: they arrive clean, you use them and they get collected, so you do not buy them and you do not dispose of them. The Cangubox measure 60 × 40 × 36 cm and are delivered in Milan, in the covered postcodes of the hinterland and in the province of Monza and Brianza, with a collection point just outside Milan: the postcode check tells you straight away if your address is inside the area. If you are weighing up the carrying-only option, this is the combination that works best, because rigid boxes stack straight on the van and are picked up by the handles on the short sides, which is how the crew handles them.

How to decide in ten minutes

Take a sheet of paper and write down four things: the floor and what the lift is like at both ends, the list of items that weigh more than thirty kilos, how many people you have confirmed for moving day, how many days you have with both homes in your hands.

If you have stairs with no lift at one end and more than three heavy pieces, ask for at least two quotes for transport only. If you have a good lift, few big pieces and a week of time, doing it yourself is a reasonable choice. If you have a piano, there is no decision to make.

Whichever road you choose, choose it early. Three weeks before, you still have all the options open, quotes to compare and free dates. Three days before, you only have what is left, and that is never the best part of the market.