The move itself is the easy part — movers do that in a day. The hard part is deciding what happens to everything that will not fit, and doing it without anybody standing over you tapping their foot.
A four-bedroom with a two-car garage and a shed holds roughly three times what a villa holds. So about two-thirds of a household has to go somewhere — and most of it is not junk. It is the good china, the workshop, the sewing room, forty years of photographs in the hall closet.
That is why this goes wrong so often. A company turns up, treats the house as cubic yards, and the person who actually lived there spends the day watching their own belongings carried past them by strangers in a hurry.
Then it is done, and three weeks later somebody goes looking for something and it is gone, and nobody can say where.
Nothing leaves the house without you saying so. Not the obvious things. Not the things your children think should go. Not the things we think should go.
If you want to sit with a box for twenty minutes, that is fine — we will go and work in another room and come back. We move at the pace of the person whose house it is. If that makes it two days instead of one, it is two days, and we will have told you that before we started rather than after.
Room by room, with you. Four destinations for everything: going with you, going to family, worth selling, letting go. You do not have to decide anything on the first visit — plenty of people use it just to see the size of the job written down.
A floor plan of the new place and a tape measure settle more disagreements than any amount of talking. The sofa that looks fine in a Marion County living room does not go into a villa, and it is far better to know that now than on moving day with a truck outside.
Family boxes packed and labeled by person. Anything with genuine resale value photographed and priced from what similar things actually sold for. Donations collected and receipted. Nothing is routed anywhere until you have said yes to it.
Whatever is left after the sorting, handled in one go. Garage, shed, attic, the cupboard above the water heater that nobody has opened since 1991. Broom-clean at the end, ready for a sale or a handover.
If the house now has to show well, that is the same phone number. Paint, drywall, trim, pressure washing and landscaping in-house; roofing, electrical, plumbing and HVAC through licensed trades who invoice you directly and are never marked up by us.
This is the question we get asked more than price, and it is almost never about the money. People want to know their things went somewhere sensible.
Packed and labeled with the name of whoever it is going to, ready for a courier or the back of a car. Four boxes for your daughter in Seattle leave as four boxes with her name on them.
Anything with genuine resale value, priced from what comparable items actually sold for rather than what someone is asking. You see the number before it goes anywhere.
Local charities, churches, veterans' organizations, animal rescues. You get the receipt for your taxes, which on a full household is frequently worth having.
What is genuinely finished. Metal and electronics pulled out and routed properly rather than everything going into one load, and disposal charged at the county's own posted rate.
We will also tell you honestly when something is not worth selling, which is the part most companies skip. Most mass-market china, most dining sets and most upright pianos have no resale market in this county. Waiting for a buyer who is not coming costs you storage, time and the thing you actually wanted, which was for it to be settled.
A larger home down to a villa or a designer home, usually against a closing date that will not move. The most common version of this job, and the one with the clearest deadline.
Often fast, often not planned, often a room rather than a home. These need a different pace and far more care about what goes to family, because there is rarely a second chance to ask.
You are in Michigan, your mother is in Stonecrest, and the move is in three weeks. We will work to your clock on the phone and to hers in the house.
Everyone has gone, the place is empty, and now it has to photograph well enough to sell. Clearing, repairs and presentation, with one point of contact for all of it.
We work regularly in the 55+ and active adult communities across Marion, Sumter and Lake counties, and in the towns around them.
Also Ocala, Belleview, Summerfield, Lady Lake, Wildwood, Oxford, Leesburg, Eustis, Tavares, Mount Dora and the towns between them. If yours is not listed, call and ask.
No charge, no obligation, and no decisions required on the day. Most people just want to know how big the job really is before they think about anything else.
That is completely normal and we are glad to talk it through with you. We will want to meet them too, and the plan gets agreed with them in the room.