Moving house is supposed to be exciting, and it is, right up until you open the cupboard under the stairs and meet every carrier bag, broken umbrella and outgrown wellington boot you have hidden in there since the children were born. Families accumulate things at a rate that defies physics, and moving day is when all of it presents its bill.
The single best thing you can do for a family move is a proper clear-out, started early. Booking a skip through a comparison service such as Rent-a-Skip in the first week of packing, rather than the last, changes the whole rhythm of a move: instead of paying to box up, transport and unpack things you no longer want, you deal with them once, at the old house, and arrive at the new one lighter.
This is a collaborative post.
Why moving with kids multiplies the stuff
Children outgrow everything on a schedule. Clothes last a season, shoes a term, and the toy that was essential at four is embarrassing at seven. Add the equipment years, the cot, the high chair, the pushchair graveyard in the garage, and a family of four can easily be storing an entire second household they no longer use. Most of it is invisible day to day because it lives in lofts, sheds and under beds. A move drags all of it into the light in a single fortnight.
The four-pile method, family edition
The classic sort into keep, donate, sell and dispose works for families with two adjustments. First, give the children ownership of their own sort. A six-year-old asked to choose ten toys to pass on to smaller children will often part with more than you would have dared remove yourself, and the framing matters: things are going to a new home, just like the family is. Second, be honest about the sell pile. If it has not sold in two weekends online, it joins the donate pile. Moving deadlines are not kind to optimistic eBay listings.
What actually goes in the skip
Once the charity bags are gone, what remains is the genuinely unwanted: the broken garden furniture, the mattress no charity will take, the flat-pack wardrobe that will not survive a third disassembly, the offcuts from every DIY project of the last decade. For a typical family clear-out a 4-yard or 6-yard skip covers it comfortably, and having it sitting on the drive for a week is quietly motivating, because an empty skip asks to be filled. If it needs to sit on the road instead, the hire company can usually arrange the council permit for you.
A few things never go in a skip: fridges and freezers, paint tins with paint still in them, gas bottles and anything with a plug is best taken to the household recycling centre or collected by the council. Rent-a-Skip’s local pages list what operators in your area will and will not accept, which saves an awkward conversation on collection day.
The payoff at the other end
Every box you do not pack is a box you do not pay to move, do not carry up the new stairs, and do not stare at unopened in a spare room for a year. Removal firms quote by volume, so a serious clear-out genuinely shrinks the bill. But the bigger prize is the first evening in the new house, when the kettle is findable, the beds are buildable, and nothing in the van belonged to a version of your family that no longer exists.
Start the clear-out the day the offer is accepted, not the week the boxes arrive. Your moving-day self will be grateful.