Why does it matter how long we are staying?

Because it decides everything else. What is worth shipping, what should go into store, what is worth selling before you come and what you should buy once you are here all follow from the horizon, and almost nobody is asked about it.

We genuinely do not know yet.

That is a real answer and a common one. Move as though it is short and keep the option open — undoing a small move is cheap and undoing a full one is not. It is the single most useful thing on this site.

What is the commonest mistake?

Shipping a household for a two-year posting into a furnished flat, and then paying to store most of it in London instead of at home. The same money, spent the other way round, would have been spent once.

We have been here longer than we planned.

Also extremely common. The point worth acting on is the first extension rather than the last one: if the stay passes about a year, the stored half should come over or be dealt with, and continuing to pay helps nobody.

Is this the same firm as the .com?

No. It is a separate site with a different approach — that one is organised around whose permission a move needs, and this one around how long you are staying.

Do you only move people into London?

Both directions, and out of London is a bigger job than in. Two or three years of accumulation plus a storage unit nobody has opened since the week they arrived is a real day's work.

London · in and out

How long are you staying?

It is the question that decides everything else about a London move — what is worth shipping, what should be held, what to sell before you come and what to buy once you are here — and almost nobody is asked it.

London is a transient city. A six-month sublet, a two-year posting, a five-year flat and a house somebody means to stay in are four completely different removals jobs, and the furniture is the only thing they have in common.

Get a quote Read the horizon table

The advice reverses in the middle

Under a year Bring almost nothing
A year or two Bring about half
Three to five Bring nearly everything
Indefinitely Bring everything
Leaving Undo all of it

Below about three years, holding what you do not bring costs less than shipping it. Above it, the charges quietly overtake the value of what is being held.

Six horizons

Find the one you are actually in

Including one for not knowing, which is a legitimate answer and a common one. Each page says what should travel, what should be held, and what the move looks like when the horizon turns out to be wrong.

A short stay

Bring little, store the rest, keep the option open.

A posting

An end date on paper. Roughly half comes and half stays.

C A posting A year or two, with an end date on paper The classic London arrangement and the one with the clearest arithmetic. Roughly half comes, half stays, and getting the split right at the start saves two moves rather than one.

Settling

Everything travels and the questions move to the property.

Leaving

The arithmetic in reverse, plus whatever is still in store.

F You are leaving And the arithmetic runs backwards Out of London, to the rest of the UK or abroad. Everything you decided at the start now has to be undone, including whatever has been sitting in a storage unit since you arrived and has probably stopped being worth the charges.

Somewhere between two of them? Say so in the notes on the quote form. The boundaries are soft and the shorter of the two is nearly always the safer assumption.

The horizon table

Four decisions, and every one of them depends on the span

Ship, store, sell, buy. Read any column downwards and it reverses direction somewhere in the middle, which is the entire argument for asking about the horizon before anything else.

Under a year

Ship
Clothes, documents, a laptop, a few books, and two or three things that make a room feel like yours.

Store
Everything else, as a single planned hold rather than as a unit you rent and forget.

Sell
Nothing yet. A short stay is a poor moment to make permanent decisions about your own furniture.

Buy here
Nothing. The flat is furnished and anything you buy has to be dealt with when you leave.
A year or two

Ship
Roughly half a household: bedding, kitchen things, a desk, books, pictures, and any single piece you would genuinely miss.

Store
Bulky furniture, seasonal items and anything that belongs to a house rather than a flat.

Sell
Large white goods, garden things, and anything that will not fit a London flat at either end of the stay.

Buy here
As little as possible, and second-hand where you do. Everything bought here becomes a decision on the way out.
Three to five years

Ship
Nearly everything you use. At this horizon shipping is cheaper than replacing and a flat needs to be a home rather than a base.

Store
Genuinely surplus things only. Structural storage over several years stops making sense.

Sell
Anything you have not used in a year and would not replace. This is the right moment to make that call.

Buy here
Normally. Furniture bought now gets used, and it moves with you afterwards if it is worth it.
Indefinitely

Ship
Everything. There is no second move being planned around, so the calculation is simply what you want to own.

Store
Short-term only, between two dates that do not meet.

Sell
Whatever you would have sold anyway. The horizon stops being a factor in the decision.

Buy here
Freely. This is the only horizon on the table where buying large furniture is straightforwardly sensible.
You do not know

Ship
As though it were short, which keeps every option open at the lowest cost.

Store
The rest, with a written inventory so that a later decision can be made on facts rather than memory.

Sell
Nothing yet, and set a date to revisit it rather than leaving it open.

Buy here
Only what a furnished flat genuinely lacks. Undoing a short move is cheap; undoing a full one is not.

The boundaries between rows are soft and the advice barely changes within one, so a rough answer is enough. What matters is which row you are in, because the recommendation changes sharply between them.

It usually does

When the horizon moves

Almost nobody stays for exactly as long as they planned. That is not a failure of planning — it is London — and the only thing that matters is whether something gets decided when it happens or quietly does not.

The six-month sublet that became four years

How common Extremely. It is the most common horizon error in London by a wide margin.

What it creates A household has been in storage for years on a monthly charge, nobody has opened the unit, and a decision that should have been made at month eight is still being deferred.

What to do Set a review date the moment the first extension happens. If the stay passes about a year, the goods should either come to London or be dealt with properly, and continuing to pay is the one option that helps nobody.
The two-year posting that was extended

How common Very. Extensions are normal and rarely planned for at the start.

What it creates Half a household is in store and the London flat is furnished with things bought to last two years, none of which will last four. Everything now needs doing twice.

What to do Bring the stored half over on the extension rather than at the end. It is one move instead of two and the flat stops being a waiting room.
The permanent move that was not

How common Less common, and much harder when it happens.

What it creates Everything was shipped on the basis of staying, and eighteen months later the whole household has to go back or somewhere else entirely. Nothing was left behind to make it easier.

What to do Nothing at the time. Prospectively, it is the argument for keeping a written inventory of everything shipped, which makes the reverse job a planning exercise rather than an archaeology one.
The storage unit nobody has opened

How common Almost universal at the two-year mark.

What it creates Charges have accumulated past what the contents are worth, nobody remembers precisely what is in there, and the not-remembering is exactly what prevents a decision being made.

What to do Have it emptied and listed. Seeing an actual list is what unlocks the decision, and a good deal of it usually turns out to be going to a charity or a buyer rather than to your flat.
The flat-share that became a household

How common A London speciality.

What it creates Two people arrived separately, each on a short horizon, each with half a life in store somewhere. Now there is one home and two storage arrangements that made sense to nobody jointly.

What to do Consolidate once, properly, with a list. Two half-held households in different places is the most expensive arrangement on this page and the easiest to fix.
The leaving date that keeps moving

How common Constant, and genuinely nobody's fault.

What it creates A move out of London is planned, unplanned, replanned. Each cycle costs a survey, a booking and sometimes a deposit, and the goods go nowhere.

What to do Ask for a quotation that states plainly what happens if the date moves. A firm that has written that down is a firm that has thought about it.

If one of these is you, the useful move is almost always the same: get the held goods listed, then decide from the list rather than from memory.

Ask about a stored household

Leaving London

The same question, pointed outwards

A posting abroad has the same arithmetic as a posting into London, with the difference that getting it wrong is considerably more expensive. Everything shipped is also everything that has to come back.

The four routes with their own pages are all horizon-led: assignments with hard end dates, apartments that decide what is worth bringing at all, furnished compounds that need almost nothing, and one corridor where the horizon and the paperwork are genuinely the same conversation.

Collection runs from all thirty-two boroughs, and from Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bristol for households leaving the UK by way of London.

Moving abroad from London

Asked most often

Questions about the horizon

Why does it matter how long we are staying?: Because it decides everything else. What is worth shipping, what should go into store, what is worth selling before you come and what you should buy once you are here all follow from the horizon, and almost nobody is asked about it.
We genuinely do not know yet.: That is a real answer and a common one. Move as though it is short and keep the option open — undoing a small move is cheap and undoing a full one is not. It is the single most useful thing on this site.
What is the commonest mistake?: Shipping a household for a two-year posting into a furnished flat, and then paying to store most of it in London instead of at home. The same money, spent the other way round, would have been spent once.
We have been here longer than we planned.: Also extremely common. The point worth acting on is the first extension rather than the last one: if the stay passes about a year, the stored half should come over or be dealt with, and continuing to pay helps nobody.
Is this the same firm as the .com?: No. It is a separate site with a different approach — that one is organised around whose permission a move needs, and this one around how long you are staying.
Do you only move people into London?: Both directions, and out of London is a bigger job than in. Two or three years of accumulation plus a storage unit nobody has opened since the week they arrived is a real day's work.

More on the questions page — working out the horizon, short stays, postings, settling, when the horizon moves, and how we work.