The Document Checklist for Moving House

Moving is the single most common way people lose documents, and the loss usually happens to the box that was not labelled and got put in the garage. The defence is a three-way split made before anything is packed: carry, pack, digitise. Do the split in one sitting with the whole document collection in front of you, because deciding item by item over three weeks produces inconsistent choices and at least one box you cannot account for on the other end.

Carry means it travels with you personally, in a bag that does not go in the van. That bag holds passports and IDs, birth and marriage certificates, the lease or completion paperwork for the new place, the current insurance policies, any immigration documents, prescriptions and essential medical records, and the moving contract itself. This is a small stack, deliberately: if the bag needs a second bag, you are carrying too much. Everything in it is either irreplaceable or needed within the first week, and those are the only two qualifying criteria.

Pack means the bulk archive, which goes in one clearly labelled box that you personally load and personally unload, not in the general pile. Digitise means anything you might need while the boxes are still sealed, which in practice is more than people expect: warranty documents for appliances that break during the move, the previous lease for a deposit dispute, utility account details, vehicle registration, and school or employment records. Photograph them and use PdfWill Image to PDF, then merge related pages, then OCR so you can find them by search on a phone in an empty flat with no filing cabinet yet assembled.

The change-of-address list is separate from the document list, and writing it down beats trusting memory. Work through: government and tax authority, employer, bank and every card issuer, insurance for home, car, and health, pension provider, doctor and dentist, subscriptions and deliveries, vehicle registration, electoral registration where applicable, and the mail forwarding service itself. Tick them off in one session rather than as you remember them, and keep the completed list as a PDF in your new-home folder, because you will need exactly this list again next time you move.

In the new place, rebuild the filing system in the first week while the memory of what went where is still fresh, rather than after the boxes have been shoved into a cupboard. Recreate the same five top-level folders, digital and physical, and put the carry bag contents away first. Scan the new lease or deed, the utility setup confirmations, and the moving receipts before they disappear, since moving costs are sometimes relevant to tax depending on where you live and your circumstances, which is a question for your accountant. Encrypt anything containing your new address and account details with protect before it goes to a backup drive.