[hkj]

Hi

Got our PR and now got a very good job offer :) They want me to start as soon as possible - so far I have said around 2-3 months but not been more specific than that. As we are intending renting our house, we don't have to sell, but on the other hand, we need to do a lot of sorting and tidying up. We also have 3 young children, and in a way, I'd rather they finished their school year.

I need to really get an idea of what is realistic in terms of getting everything straight and sorted and us on the plane - i know its a bit of a "how long is a bit of string" question, but does anyone who has done it have any advice as to what is realistic?

Many thanks

Helen

[KildareKiwi]

Helen

I know myself time schedules with such a move are difficult to plan. Myself & family are emigrating from Ireland later this year & there is a lot to sort out.

I guess in your case the best thing to do is start from the end & work backwards. You need to establish how long you can hold your future employer off as this will set the maximum time that you have to make the move.

Are you shipping any items? It appears most shipping firms require approx 6-8 weeks to get your goods to NZ after collection. Getting quotes from shipping companies can be as long / short as you are willing to take, but I suggest having a good look around as price does vary. A firm which crops up quite often on this forum is Pickfords.

You also need to balance this against how long it is going to take to rent your house out.

Three months should be sufficient to sort all of this out, though I trust you will also need some time at the other end to find a place to live, get kids enrolled in schools, get a car etc.

My overall advice would be to take as long as circumstances allow.

Good luck

[shakyle2906]

HI

We have been her in NZ now just 2weeks.

We only started planing on coming over here just before Christmas, and were going to come over as holidaymakers, when out of the blue after posting my husbands cv on a website i found purely by error (a good one now!!) we had a job offer.

We went to local shipping company middle Feb and decided on shipping 'just a few' over and sell all our furniture as we didnt know what kind of property we would be living in over here, we had two huge DFS setees that i know wouldnt fit in much over here. We finally packed 11 boxes and sent them off first week March. Deciding on what to put in them was a nightmare and we only have the one little one, he is 4.5yrs old, working fulltime too, it took a few weekends working flat out sorting through stuff.

We thought we were wel prepared, but the last 2 weeks were horrendous, especially the last two days, i never experienced so much stress in all my life. On top of the move, father in law got taken into Hospital with an angina attack, little one broke up for half term, both hubby and little one went down with tummy upsets, i had to have tooth out in emergency, all on top of this, its wonder i didnt take to the wine bottle!!

It was especially difficult, as parents in law dismissed us coming over, thought we were making biggest mistake of our lives and never offered to have our little one, so just keeping him occupied was a nightmare.

Enough of me!!

What i would say is start now, you can never be too prepared i think. We had to sell all our furniture which was nightmare, i was practically giving stuff away in the end, and still found it hard, people wanted to pay less. Charity shops did well out of us, think i have kept 3 of them going for long time.

If i can help further, as could go on forever and dont want to bore you, email me on shastevekyle@yahoo.co.nz, as email on forum is still uk one and dont always check it so much now.

Good luck, its well worth it when you get out here, have look at my blog!

Sharon
x

[Sam B]

In terms of tidying up and sorting out, I would say 1 full day per 2 rooms - some rooms take longer than others, e.g. children's bedroom = hours, living room = not very long. We are quite tidy and I am not a hoarder, but I was surprised how long it took and how much stuff there was to recycle/take to charity shops. We did 8 full carloads to charity shop and dump. Giving a whole day to 2 rooms allows time for drinking wine, getting distracted by a pile of photos, arguing over what to throw away and what to keep by the way. This is the most time consuming bit of the whole procedure.

In terms of packing up the house - if you have done a good job in the tidying/sorting out phase, this is much quicker. Bank on 4 rooms per day. But allow loads of time to decide what goes in the suitcases and all the weighing involved here! Good luck, it is quite cathartic in the end.