New Military posting? - Follow these tips for a smooth delivery day!
I've been an Australian army wife for five years now … still a newbie - I know! … but having completed three military relocations in just five years - I've been forced to learn a thing or two! I thought I'd compile a list of my top tips for a smooth defence move and spare you a little of my military wife heartache! These are the things I wish we'd known before posting with the defence force:
Visit the house as soon as you have access (for added preparedness). Never procrastinate and look through the house for the first time an hour before your move in! Consider even giving rooms and kitchen cupboards designations with a sharpie and masking tape so there's even less work on move in day!
A little kindness goes a long way; we were exhausted parents with a newborn and overslept our alarm for our first defence delivery; our removalists had to idle at the gate of the base we were living on for half an hour or more waiting for us to hurriedly dress, throw the kids and all our stuff in the car and checkout of our hotel which was 20 mins down the road before we were able to meet them and let them into the house. We were extremely apologetic and asked each mover for their breakfast/coffee order as a way to make amends. They were genuinely moved that we valued their time and not only did a wonderful job but were super amiable to work with.
Sketch or print out your house floor plan blueprints so that you can ensure they are a match for the actual house layout (it’s happened many times before! Residents are provided the wrong plans and arive to find that there are less rooms and significantly less space for furniture … right before it all gets brought into the hoose). Roughly allocate a space to each piece of furniture and hopefully you won't need to rearrange the house once the movers leave.
Keep a running tally of ANY damage … both to the home itself during the delivery process or to your belongings (make sure the removalists tally matches yours!)
We learned this one the hard way: test electronics as they come off the truck! If the movers don't ask to see your tv's and computers working before they leave - insist that they wait around until you've tested everything valuable and take video footage of anything that is malfunctioning.
Ensure you have food & water for the day with you; the removalists are on a tight schedule and they'll push hard for as many hours as necessary to get the job done! If you and your partner are present, one of you could leave but at least one of you needs to be in attendance at all times and it really isn't advisable for just one of you to be at the residence with a team of removalists; there are some stories out there of removalists who display less than honourable business tactics when a military spouse is the sole adult on the premises.
Enlist friends and family if you can! If you happen to have contacts in your posting location; make full use of them! Delivery is infinitely easier when your children are being cared for, there's a meal waiting for you at the end of the day or a friendly face shows up to help you unpack!
if you opt for the complete Unpack - on the day, 'explosion of all boxes' (content removed and boxes taken away) … have all your boxes unpacked onto your dining table, in the garage - then ferry items into their designated rooms in the house as and when you can. I know this seems counter-intuitive … yes it DOES add time to the process, but you'll thank me later! On our first posting we had to weed out and remove (read kill) multiple hand sized spiders which had stowed away in boxes and in nooks and crannies of furniture during the removals process. We had three toddlers underfoot and on top of dodging removalists who were wheeling towers of boxes around, we were terrified one of them would have a run in with one of these spiders before we were able to get to it. We even heard of a family who needed their entire home fumigated within weeks of moving in as their boxes had contained a family of cockroaches which rapidly duplicated and infested their new house! Save yourself a nightmare and have boxes unpacked in the garage or left packed in the garage so that you can put items away at your own leisure (once you're sure they're not harbouring any creepy crawlies!)
Advocate, advocate, advocate! - coming back to the minority of removalists; many, many removalists take pride in their work and do a good job, but there will always be the few (as in any industry) who will by any means do the least amount of work possible and be horribly abusive about it. Advocate for yourself at all times and for Australians: call Toll immediately if things take a turn for the worse.
Finally: be as intentional as you can. There's no rougher start to life in a new house than staring for weeks at furniture that's been dumped in 'place holder' spots around the house and mountains of boxes that tower over you for months before they get around to being unpacked. I'll cover this in detail in another post, but try to be consistent with the layout of your living spaces: you can instantly transform a house into a home if you have a minimalist selection of home decor and a concrete plan for where everything goes. We have what I refer to as capsule decor (my spin off of a capsule wardrobe… but for our house). We have a limited number of decor items in our chosen colour scheme, we know exactly where they go and they are among the first items that we unpack in any new house - so that our space is instantly familiar. Unpack everything as soon as you physically can and you'll enjoy the fruits of your hard work for a long time to come - rather than watching removalists in two years time, load still unpacked boxes back onto a truck.
Are you new to Australian military life yourself? - why not read my post: “10 Things I didn't know about being a Military Wife" … leave a comment below if you've ever had an idea that simplified your delivery day in unexpected ways!
