Moving in summer: what the heat does and how to work around it

A moving day in July is not longer than the others: it is shorter. By eleven the stairwell is already hot, a car left in the sun turns into an oven, and after three trips with your arms full you move at half the speed you had at eight. People who move between June and early September almost never have a strength problem. They have an hours problem: the hours when you can carry weight without risk are few, and they sit at the two ends of the day.

Then there is the second half of the trouble, and you only notice it when it is too late. In the hot months half the people you depend on are away: the building manager who has to tell you how to book the lift, the friend who promised a pair of hands, the office that answers every other day. You organise a summer move by holding those two things together, the time that shrinks and the people who are not around.

Decide your hours before you decide anything else

Heat is not something you take on, it is something you work around. Take moving day and cut it into three bands before you have decided anything else.

Everything heavy goes between first light and mid morning: dismantled wardrobes, appliances, the stacks of boxes full of books, the long trips up and down the stairs. It is the only window in which you work without the heat taking something off you on every trip, and it is for loading, not for looking for the screwdriver.

In the middle of the day you stay indoors and do the light jobs: emptying drawers, wrapping glasses, taking down curtains, cleaning what has been freed up. In winter these look like filler, and in summer they are how you avoid losing the day.

From late afternoon the heavy work starts again, with one extra rule: what you load in the evening you unload in the evening, because a vehicle left full until the next morning spends the first hours of sun with your things inside.

Three small things also matter, the ones nobody plans and everybody notices when they are missing: water within reach on every floor, a real break every hour, and someone keeping count of everyone else's breaks, because the person who is overheating is the last to notice. Closed shoes, which in summer you are tempted to swap for sandals, and short sleeves with your shoulders covered if the load goes through a courtyard.

If there are many flights of stairs, if there is a piano or a six door wardrobe, if you have already had an episode of low blood pressure or a back that has stopped you in the past, the heat is not a detail you can ignore. In those cases calling a removal company for the transport alone is the right choice, and the third way between doing it yourself and hiring a company still holds: they carry, you pack in the weeks before, when you can choose the hour you work in.

What does not cope with heat, and it is nearly all in the bathroom and the kitchen

With heat the house splits in two: the things nothing happens to, and a small group that really suffers. That small group is nearly all in two rooms, and it needs separating from the rest while you pack, not the day after.

The bathroom holds the medicines. Many packs have the maximum storage temperature printed on them: read it, because that is the figure that decides how they travel. The ones with a limit go into a bag you keep with you, in the house and in the car, never in a load that sits in the sun for hours. The same bag for the creams and cosmetics you need in the first days: the rest can wait in an ordinary load, but after an afternoon in a closed car a foundation does not go back to what it was.

In the kitchen the problem is the oil, the chocolate and everything that comes out of the freezer. Empty the freezer in the days before, not on the morning itself: cooking what is left takes less work than finding it a cool place while you load. Open bottles get closed properly and travel upright, in a bag of their own, because a bottle on its side will leak past a cap that would hold if it were standing up.

Outside those two rooms there are three things heat ruins quietly: candles, which bend when they lean against a warm wall, vinyl records, which warp in a car in the sun and never go flat again, and anything with a lithium battery. For the last of those the medicine rule applies again: the manual states a storage temperature, and a drawer at home respects it while the boot of a car parked in August does not.

Plants travel last and come off the van first, watered the evening before and never at midday. If you have a dog or a cat, heat changes the journey more than anything else does, and how to prepare the days around the move is in moving with pets: a car parked in the sun is never a short enough stop when there is an animal inside.

Loading when it is thirty five degrees outside

If the good window is three hours long, every job that lands inside it weighs more than it would weigh in March. That is the angle to look at packaging from, rather than how it is made.

With cardboard two jobs fall on the worst day by necessity: assembling the boxes and taping the bottoms happen when the boxes are needed, and taking the empty cardboard away happens afterwards, when the new home is still full of things and the summer opening times of the recycling centre need checking before you load the car. The other two, buying them and filling them, you can bring forward whenever you like.

Cangubox arrive ready, with the lid already on them: two halves hinged on the long sides that you fold down and clip together, so they close without tape and on the hot day only one job is left, filling them. They are rigid and the lid is flat, so they stack even when they are loaded. The Dolly comes with every rental, both with home delivery and if you come to the CanguPoint yourself: it is a four wheeled platform to stack the boxes on and push them instead of carrying them, and in the heat the difference shows in the corridor and on the landing, which are the stretches where you make the most trips.

Two habits apply to any box, of any material. Full stacks wait in the shade, never on the pavement in the sun while you go back and forth. And load in layers: the heavy things underneath, the heat sensitive ones on top, so the medicine bag and the computer box come off first and do not stay in the vehicle while you unload the rest.

In August anything that depends on other people has to be asked for early

The last part is the one that wrecks days, and it has nothing to do with boxes. In summer, offices and caretakers cut their hours, and every step that needs someone else's yes should be brought forward by a week compared with what you would do in October.

The lift to be booked for an hour, the permit to park the van in front of the entrance, the notice to end a utility contract: ask now who answers in August and on which days, and get the answer in writing. An office closed over Ferragosto, the holiday on 15 August, is not a surprise, it is a date that was already on the calendar.

The same goes for us, and it is why it pays to fix the collection date early: in August the usable days in a week are fewer than they look.

If the move is still some way off, the order to work in is in the moving checklist, and in summer it works the same way with one change: everything that depends on an office moves a week earlier.

What to do now

Look at the calendar and choose the date thinking about who is around, not just about when you are free. Then cut that day into three bands and put the heavy work in the outer two. Ask straight away about the lift, the permits and the contract notices, which are the things outside your control. Put together a bag for the medicines and for anything with a temperature printed on it, and keep it in the house until the last minute. Empty the freezer in the days before. Put water on every floor before you start, because at mid morning you will not go down to buy it.

The rest is the usual: pack in the weeks when you can choose the hour, and leave to moving day only the things that have to be done on moving day.