Tips for housemovers

Five and a half years ago I swore I'd never move house again.  Last week, I went back on my word.

I took a day off work to pack boxes ahead of the movers, and to lighten my day I tweeted tips for housemovers as wisdom occurred to me throughout the day.  Unfortunately, only one item of wisdom presented itself;

Tips for housemovers #1: Empty dishwasher before packing cupboards. It kills to be all packed and then find loads more crockery!!

Now that it's all done and dusted, I can present all the collected wisdom in ten top tips;

1. Empty the dishwasher before packing cupboards. It kills to be all packed and then find loads more crockery!
2. Finish your packing before the removals company arrives.  This is for two reasons.  Firstly, it's embarrassing to keep generating new boxes to be moved every time they walk into the house.  Secondly, it means they move it all, and you're not left with 4.5 car loads to be moved the following day.
3. Don't plan to move during the coldest winter since 1983 or whatever this is.  When your landlord-owned washing machine freezes you can't get any clothes cleaned and you end up stressing about that deposit!
4. When painting over the polyfilla you've just used to fill in the holes, keep a tight hold of the paint brush.  It's annoying to add "clean paint off carpet" to your job list.
5. Don't kill yourself trying to clean the old place because you're worried about the deposit.  The landlord might look at the filthy, worn carpet that needs replacing (with freshly added paint stains) and ask "Have you had the carpet professionally cleaned?"
6. Don't forget to cancel your rent payment to the old landlord.  It's annoying to realise you're paying for two places at once, and also it's embarrassing to go cap in hand asking for it back.
7. After you've disconnected the dishwasher waste pipe from under the sink, remember to cap the pipe so you don't flood the kitchen when you use the sink.
8. Keep a blow heater on hand in case you flood the kitchen and need the concrete floor to dry out quickly.
9. Don't leave defrosting the almost-entirely-ice-filled-freezer to the last night before you hand the keys back. You end up flooding the kitchen.  Again.  Just after you've finished mopping up from the last time.
10. When lifting small sets of drawers rather than pushing them on their wheels, in order to be less noisy for the neighbours, make sure not to lift by the top piece alone.  When the rest falls off and smashes to smithereens on the floor, you make more noise than you imagined possible.