what to do whilst waiting for your stuff to arrive?

[Guest thebaddeleys]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm new here and hopefully moving to Adelaide this October with my husband and two children.

 

I am just trying to work out what to do if we ship all our stuff over there and it takes around 8 weeks, what does everyone do in the meantime without there stuff?

 

Do people rent a furnished home for 8 weeks over there (can you get that short term leases?) or do people live out of hotels (prob very expensive) or do most people not ship there things?

 

Many thanks for any responses

 

Kerry:err:

[Guest Django]

We are not sending our matresses so we will sleep on them here before we go on the floor. When we get there we will buy new ones and sleep on the floor until our beds arrive. The usual plan is to buy garden furniture and use that in the house until your indoor stuff arrives.

Look at it as an adventure rather than roughing it. You can take a few cups, plates and items of cutlery in you suitcases so you don't have to go without much at all.

 

Pete

[Rachiegarlo]

you could also try for on arrival accomodation which is cheap and furnished and covers the bills.If successful you can have 12 weeks in one.

[The Monaghans]

Our furniture left about a month before we did, so we spent 2 weeks on holiday in Devon and 2 weeks visiting family. We stayed at a caravan park when we got here which was OK but not recommended long term. Most people take on short term rentals before they leave the UK and then either look for a long term rental when they arrive or, like us, buy a house as soon as possible. There are several members on PIA who own short term rentals, try Roo1, Guzzler and Sas, Tyke and Dale and Jo for a start. Good luck!

[Guest stufi1997]

We came over with the clothes on our backs so to speak....took a change as well, We rented out our house furnished and got OAA when we arrived.Drove around checking out where we wanted to live, got a rental.... then just went in to the shop, bought a cheap house package, bedroom packages and hired a van. Drove to our new home and spent 3 days making up flat packed furniture....piece of cake. Good Luck with it all Fiona

[kjc79]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm new here and hopefully moving to Adelaide this October with my husband and two children.

 

I am just trying to work out what to do if we ship all our stuff over there and it takes around 8 weeks, what does everyone do in the meantime without there stuff?

 

Do people rent a furnished home for 8 weeks over there (can you get that short term leases?) or do people live out of hotels (prob very expensive) or do most people not ship there things?

 

Many thanks for any responses

 

Kerry:err:

hi kerry,

 

what we have done was to get our stuff shipped and it was sent 1st may(shared container though so takes longer for others to fill it).we ended up moving in with G's mum and hubby for 4 weeks before we flew out and we have rented a holiday rental - furnished - for 3 weeks which worked out well as our stuff arrived on the day that we landed and cleared customs last week and was delivered today.

we didnt know where we wanted to live as i had just read and read about areas from others as we have never been before so we just drove around really and seem to like further south than we planned.

by the time we got over the jet lag and found the area and rental and all the other things like medicare , vetting schools and enrolling the kids, driving licences and cars etc it soon filled in these past two weeks we leave this rental by friday with most things set in some sort of order - well as much as we can with moving from the other side of the world just over 2 weeks ago LOL x others i know that are arriving this week have furnished retals for 4 weeks.

 

hope that may help a little maybe?

 

kath x

[Guest morgie@51]

The way we did it was as follows. I came over on my own in mid April and the rest of the family came 5 weeks later. Our furniture was sent 2 weeks into the first 5 weeks I was here on my own whilst Ali and the kids stopped with the in laws for 3 weeks.

 

We were lucky and got OAA so we had basics like beds, kitchen equipment, table & chairs etc for 12 weeks. We moved into a 12 month rental a few weeks before the container arrived so had to make do for a few weeks.

 

We bought those things that we needed immediately or hadn't shipped but because I hadn't started work at that point (start 7th July) we tried to keep our costs to a minimum where possible. For things that we definitely needed but were too small to realistically haggle on (like a kettle) we made a list and went round all the different shops, listed the prices and picked the cheapest.

 

We needed to furnish the family room as we didn't have any furniture to go there in the container. To keep the costs down we did a tour of second hand furniture shops and Salation Army stores (Salvos). We bought two 2 seater settees from a place near the airport called Mrs Bankrupts Dump House. At $95 each they were a steal - not the greatest quality but at that price even if they don't fit in when we finally buy we'll have had our moneys worth. We also bought a secondhand table and chairs there for $930. This was a bit more expensive than we intended but it is solid oak with 6 chairs and the quality is far better than we could have afforded new (this was one of our few treats!). We also bought a unit for the tv in the family room which we had to buy new as we couldn't find one that was suitable in the Salvos etc.

 

Outside of the family room we bought a new bed for our middle child because he didn't have a bed coming. Fortunately he chose one with a pull out trundle bed so we could use that for the youngest as well until her bed arrived. We got a double bed for us and a single for our eldest from the Salvos for $200. These only had to last a few weeks then will go back to the Salvos so we viewed the cost as a charitable donation! The last big item was a fridge freezer which we bought from a second hand shop for $380 including delivery and 90 day warranty.

 

There are some shops like Cheap As Chips and The Reject Shop which can be good for some of the more basic items and also for small bits of furniture if you're not fussed about the quality - I've just got a computer desk for $40 from the Reject Shop, again not great quality but it does the job for minimal cost at a time when it's been spend, spend, spend with no income. Finally for small items like knives and forks, plates etc the Salvos can be an absolute gold mine. If we'd discovered them earlier we would have got more of the basics there I'm sure eg we got 8 table mats for 50c each and a fruit bowl for $1.50.

 

As you can see our aim has been to minimise the cost where we can and make things liveable until we got our furniture. We used John Masons to ship and it took 9 weeks and 1 day for it to arrive. This included a weeks delay as the container came off the ship a few hours too late for the weekly customs inspection at the removals at this end.

 

Hope this helps.