Journal · Renovations
Starting a renovation: what actually happens to all your belongings?
Architectural drawings are exciting. Then the builder emails with a start date, and reality lands with a jolt: where on earth does everything go?
By Helen & Ruth
You can already picture Saturday mornings in the new kitchen, light through the doors and the calm of a utility room that finally holds everything. What nobody pictures is the middle bit: books from the living room piled in bedrooms, wardrobes emptied for the plasterers, and the entire contents of the kitchen in taped boxes blocking the hallway.
A major renovation affects far more rooms than the ones with dust sheets over the door. If you're living on site, you end up cooking dinner between towers of cardboard. If you're moving into a rental, you're suddenly running two households at once. Here's what really needs to happen to your belongings before the builders arrive.
1. Three piles, before a single box is taped
Before anything is packed, everything in the affected rooms needs to land in one of three categories.
- What travels with you: keep this ruthlessly lean. Take seasonal clothes, work essentials, the children's bedtime books and enough kitchen basics to feel human. Label these boxes in bright tape so they never end up buried in a lock-up.
- What goes into storage: furniture, seasonal kit, archives and the crockery you won't miss. It needs protecting from dust and damp, listing properly, and grouping by room so you aren't hunting through crates six months later.
- What leaves your life for good: a renovation is the best excuse you'll ever have to edit what you own. It's far cheaper to let go of the awkward armchair now than to store it, move it twice and find it looks wrong in the finished room.
2. Don't pay to store things you won't want back
Storage is charged by space and removals by volume and time. Paying to keep unwanted belongings in a unit for nine months is one of the most common and most expensive renovation mistakes we see. Editing first means a smaller unit, a lower monthly bill, fewer boxes to carry up the stairs, and no regret when you walk into the finished space.
3. Think inside the cupboards before the joinery is built
Most architects and kitchen designers think brilliantly about layout, light and finish. What they don't know is that your children need to reach their own lunchboxes, that the mixer needs a deep pull-out, or how many centimetres your winter coats actually take up on a rail.
A brand-new cupboard can look beautiful and still be infuriating every single morning. Taking stock of what you own while the plans are still on paper lets you adjust shelf heights, drawer dividers and socket positions before the joiner builds them in.
4. Moving back in: the day you actually get your home back
When the tools are packed away and the dust has settled, you're standing in echoing rooms in front of sixty boxes, wondering which one holds the mugs. Plan for that day and it becomes the best part rather than another month of living out of cardboard:
- The kitchen first: plates, glasses, pantry and everyday cooking kit into sensible zones, so you can cook dinner that evening.
- Wardrobes organised: hanging, folded and shoe storage arranged so you can get dressed without hunting.
- Beds made and candles lit: the house feels like home on day one, not in three weekends' time.
Need help before the dust begins?
Whether you're still planning and want help thinking through storage, need an extra pair of hands to sort rooms before packing, or want the finished home unpacked and set up so you simply walk in and relax, we can help.
Also worth reading: pre-move decluttering and moving day unpacking.
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