A moving checklist for the Capital Region, from eight weeks out to the week after

A moving checklist works backwards from the date. Book the mover and give notice eight weeks out, sort and start packing at six, handle the building paperwork and parking at four, confirm utilities and addresses at two, finish packing the night before, and spend the week after on the state and city offices that need your new address.

Eight weeks out

1. Pick the date. If it can be anything other than the last three days of the month, make it anything other than the last three days of the month.
2. Book the mover. In this region the end of month and the whole of late August fill up first, and a date in either needs six to eight weeks.
3. Give notice on the lease, in writing, on whatever schedule the lease says.
4. Ask your new building whether it wants a certificate of insurance from your mover, and get the exact wording it wants.
5. Start a folder. Every email, every quote and every confirmation goes in it, and it travels with you rather than on the truck.

Six weeks out

1. Walk the house with a roll of tape and decide what is not coming. Sell it, give it away or book a pickup for it now, while there is still time for a buyer to turn up.
2. Measure the new place. Doorways, the turn on the stairs, the space where the sofa is supposed to go. Older houses around here have narrower stairs than the furniture that has to go up them.
3. Order boxes and start packing the rooms you do not use: the spare room, the basement, the books, the out-of-season clothes.
4. If you are packing the kitchen yourself, read our kitchen guide first. It is the room that decides whether you finish.

Four weeks out

1. Send the building's insurance requirements to your mover, and reserve the elevator or loading dock if the building has one.
2. Sort out parking at both ends. If either street is in one of Albany's residential permit zones near downtown, find out from the city what is needed to hold space for a truck on the day.
3. Contact the schools, if you have children, and ask what the new district needs from you.
4. File the change of address with the Postal Service so that mail starts forwarding on the date rather than a week after it.
5. Book any specialty work: a piano, a gun safe, a hot tub. These need notice.

Two weeks out

1. Set up the utilities at the new place for the day before you arrive, with heat first if it is anywhere near winter. For most of the region that is a call to National Grid; some villages run their own.
2. Close or transfer the internet, and expect the installation date to be the least reliable date of the whole move.
3. Confirm the mover: date, arrival window, both addresses, and the phone number of the person who will be on site.
4. Use up the freezer. Anything still in it on the day is not coming.
5. Refill prescriptions and pull together the things that ride with you: documents, medication, chargers, keys, the folder.

The last few days, and the day

1. Finish packing the night before. Not the morning of. A crew that arrives to open drawers is a crew that is waiting.
2. Defrost the fridge and freezer a full day ahead, with a towel under them.
3. Clear a path from every room to the door, and in winter clear and salt the walk outside too.
4. Put everything that is not going on the truck in one room, and tell the crew which room.
5. On the day, have one person who can make decisions. It does not have to be you.
6. Walk the old place empty, photograph every room, take meter readings, and hand back the keys.

The week after

The offices, in roughly the order they matter. None of this is glamorous and all of it is easier in the first week than the third.

• Your driver's license and vehicle registration, through the New York State DMV, which lets you change an address online. The state sets a deadline for this; check the DMV's site for the current one.
• Voter registration, through your county's Board of Elections.
• The city's residential parking permit, if your new street is in a permit zone.
• Trash and recycling day for your new street. In Albany it varies block by block, and the pile you leave on the wrong morning stays there.
• Bank, insurance, employer, and anything that sends you paper.
• Utilities at the old place, closed on the day you left rather than the day you remember.

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