Small Moves in Summer: A Guide for Students and First-Time Renters

A student room or a first rental is the move nobody writes a guide for. There is not much furniture, the budget is thin, the dates are decided by a letting agent rather than by you, and most advice online assumes you are shifting a four-bedroom house. This guide covers the version you are actually doing.

We run small moves across Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire from our yard in Shaftesbury, and summer is when most of them happen. Below is what a small move involves, what it costs, how to handle a gap between tenancies, and the mistakes that cost first-time renters money.

What actually counts as a small move

The test is volume, not the number of rooms. A studio, a single room in a shared house, or a one-bed flat with light furniture will fit in one van with one or two crew. That is a small move. A one-bed flat with a sofa, a double bed, a wardrobe and a full kitchen is closer to a house move, and it gets priced as one.

Our own pricing splits along the same line. A single-item collection starts from £55, a studio or single-room move starts from £180 through our man and van service, and a full studio or one-bed house removal starts from £600. If you are not sure which side of the line you fall on, describe your three biggest items when you ask for a price and we will tell you.

Man and van, hire van, or full removal

Choose by what happens if something goes wrong, not by the headline price.

Hiring a van yourself is the cheapest option on paper. You pay for the van, the fuel, the deposit and a day of your life, and nothing you carry is insured. It works when the load is small, you have a helper, and everything you own is replaceable. Two flights of stairs with a double mattress is a genuinely bad afternoon, so be honest about the access before you commit.

A man and van is the middle option and the one most small moves land on. You get a fixed price in writing, one or two crew sized to the job, and proper kit as standard: furniture blankets, straps, sack barrows and door protectors. Cover runs to £2.5 million public liability and £50,000 goods in transit per load. Stair carries are in the price, so a third-floor walk-up does not attract a surcharge.

A full removal is for when the one-bed is genuinely full, or when you want the packing done as well. If you are weighing the two, we have written the comparison in more detail in man and van versus a full removal service.

The gap between tenancies is the real problem

In a first rental move, the hard part is usually not the move. It is the days in between. Your old tenancy ends on a Saturday, the new one starts a week or two later, and you are left holding everything you own with nowhere to put it.

You have two honest options. You can move twice, into a friend's spare room and out again, which costs you two moves and a great deal of goodwill. Or you can store once. Containerised storage at our Shaftesbury yard starts from £20 a week for a half container, which holds the contents of a studio or one-bed, with no minimum term beyond the first week. Your things go into a sealed container, the yard is restricted-access and monitored, and we bring them out when the new place is ready.

Storage is quoted alongside the move, so it stays one company, one price and one person to ring.

Book earlier than feels necessary

Summer is the busiest stretch of the year for removals, and the diary does not fill evenly. Fridays and the last few days of the month go first, because that is when tenancies turn over and completions land. We have written about why Friday is the most popular moving day and whether it is worth following the crowd.

Most small moves inside about 25 miles of our Shaftesbury yard can be slotted same-day or next-day when there is space in the diary. In July and August, do not count on it. If a contract has fixed your date, get it booked as soon as you have the contract in hand. We cover the towns where most of this demand sits, including Bath, Bournemouth and Yeovil.

Packing a small flat without spending much

Buy fewer, stronger boxes than you think you need, and put the heavy things in the small ones.

• Books, tins and anything dense go in small boxes. A large box of books cannot be lifted, and it will fail at the bottom.
• Clothes stay on their hangers. Slide a bin liner up over a bundle of ten and tie it at the hooks. That is your wardrobe packed in four minutes.
• Bedding, towels and coats are free padding. Pack them around plates, glasses and anything with a screen.
• Label the side of the box, not the top. Boxes get stacked, and the top is the one face you will not be able to read.
• Keep one box back and do not load it. Kettle, mug, teabags, phone charger, toilet roll, bin bags, paracetamol and a change of clothes. That box travels with you.

If sourcing materials is more hassle than it is worth, a box pack through our packing service starts from £40, delivered free in our area a week ahead. You pack, we collect.

If you are moving between counties

A small load going a long way is priced by the route, not by the room count. Moving a single room from Dorset to Bristol, Exeter, Cardiff or London is a different calculation to a hop across town, because the cost sits in the driving rather than the carrying.

Say where you are going and roughly what you are taking when you ask for a price, and the quote for your long-distance move will reflect the actual run rather than a standard local rate.

What first-time renters get wrong

The expensive mistakes are almost never about the furniture.

1. Photograph the old place before you hand back the keys. Every room, every mark that was already there, timestamped. Deposit disputes are won with photographs and lost without them.
2. Take meter readings at both ends on the day, and photograph those too. Electricity, gas and water, with the serial number in shot.
3. Measure the doorway and the stairwell, not the room. A sofa that fits the lounge perfectly may not turn the half-landing, and finding out on the day is an expensive discovery.
4. Check where the van can legally stop. Permit bays, loading restrictions and narrow terraces need arranging in advance, and some councils want notice.
5. Change your address properly, not just with the bank. Our change of address checklist covers who needs telling and in what order.

Getting a price

Tell us the pickup address, the drop address, the date and the three biggest things you are taking. We will send a fixed price in writing within the hour, with the insurance certificate attached, and that number is the number on the invoice provided the job on the day is the job we quoted.

Get a fixed quote for your move.