Moving house in winter: rain, cold and short days

In winter, moving day does not end when you are tired. It ends when it gets dark. By mid-afternoon the courtyard is already in shadow, in the new building you still do not know where the stairwell light switches are, and you make the last trip holding your phone up so you can see. Meanwhile it has been raining since the morning, the entrance hall is covered in footprints, and after the tenth trip between the front door and the van your grip is weaker than you think.

A winter move is planned around three things that do not matter in summer: daylight, water and cold. You sort out all three in the days before: none of them can wait until moving day.

Count the hours of daylight, not your free hours

If you have taken a day off, it feels as if you have the whole day. But the work that goes badly in the dark is exactly the heavy work: carrying boxes down stairs you do not know, loading a van in the street, unloading in a courtyard with no street lights.

So work backwards, starting from the time it gets dark. Loading starts as soon as it is light, and there is only one rule: the last heavy item goes into the new home before dark. The evening is for jobs you can do under a lamp, such as opening the kitchen box, sorting out the bathroom and making the bed.

In the new home, check the lighting in advance, rather than finding out when you need it. If the electricity supply is not active yet, you will spend the evening of the move in the dark. How to choose between the two procedures, and how far ahead, is in voltura or subentro for electricity and gas. And even with the power on, the people who lived there before may have taken the ceiling lights with them. Put two floor lamps, an extension lead and a battery torch in the first box you will open.

Rain: you decide where things get wet

When it rains, the journey itself happens under cover. The trouble is the few metres between the front door and the van, repeated dozens of times. That is where the boxes, your shoes and then the floor get wet.

Three things need doing before you start:

• The van close to the front door. If you need permission to stop there, ask for it in good time. The article on parking permits for the moving van explains how it works.
• A tarpaulin within reach, to cover the stack waiting on the pavement while you go back and forth.
• The route covered in the new home, laid down before the first trip and not after the fifth. What to use is in how to protect a new floor.

Then there is what the boxes are made of. Cardboard absorbs water, and when it gets wet it loses its stiffness: if a box has been sitting on the ground in the rain, check the bottom before you lift it. Cangubox are made of rigid polypropylene, so the walls do not soak up water or change shape when they get wet, and they dry with a cloth. They close by lowering the two hinged halves of the lid until they hook onto each other: no tape, and so no tape to stick onto a damp surface.

One precaution applies to any box. Anything that water can damage, meaning documents, books, fabrics and electronics, travels in the middle of the load and not in the stack by the door, and in the rain it goes out covered.

Cold: hands, open doors and devices

You notice the cold less than the rain, but it wears you down all day. Cold hands grip less than warm ones, and you find out when a box slips on the third step. You need thin gloves with rubber palms, which keep your grip and leave your fingers free to feel. Dress in layers rather than in a coat: after three flights of stairs you sweat, and when you stop on the pavement the sweat turns cold on your skin.

With the doors wide open all morning, the new home cools down while you fill it. Keep one room shut, the one where you will sleep the first night, with the heating on. If you have never switched on the radiators in the new home, try them in the days before: whose boiler it is and what to check is in your new home in autumn.

The cold damages two things without anyone noticing. Do not switch on screens and computers that have travelled in the cold as soon as they arrive: some manufacturers, in the manual, ask you to let them warm up to the temperature of the room first, because condensation forms inside (how to pack a TV). Plants, on the other hand, suffer even after a few minutes left outside, so they stay indoors until the end, as moving plants explains.

If the stairs are outdoors and slippery, or if your back has stopped you before, calling a removal company in winter is the right choice. There is still the middle way: a company moves your things, and the boxes are your job, done at your own pace in the weeks before, indoors and in the warm.

What to do now

Check what time it gets dark on the day you have chosen and count backwards: the last heavy load has to be finished before then. Make sure the electricity in the new home is on and try the heating. Ask for permission to stop the van near the front door. Get a tarpaulin, rubber-palmed gloves, two lamps and a torch ready.

And the evening before, check the weather forecast, so you know whether you will need the tarpaulin.