It has become a cliché to say that moving house is equivalent to opening a new chapter in life. It is a chance to start afresh and change everything you didn’t like before – from your job and your reputation among colleagues and peers to your living surroundings and your home décor. You can leave all the frustrating, loathsome things from your past behind and create a happier new world for yourself.
What about the things you did like though? The things you don’t want to leave behind – your close friends, your favorite places in town, your cherished possessions? Sure enough, you cannot bring your pals and your preferred hang-outs along. What you can do, however, is take your old belongings to your new home.
But is it worth it? Is it better to move stuff or buy new, especially when it comes to heavy and difficult to move items, such as furniture pieces?
As with many aspects of moving, there is no definite answer – this is a personal decision and depends on a number of interconnected factors. Even if you wish for a brand new life, it may turn out that selling everything and buying new stuff after the move will be too expensive or too time- and effort-consuming for you to afford. Vice versa, even if you’d like to keep your old furniture, it may not fit into your new home or may be too costly to relocate, etc.
So, in order to make the right decision, you need to carefully weigh the pros and cons of moving each individual item.
Should I move my furniture or buy new?
There are several important factors to take into consideration when wondering whether to ship furniture or buy new:
Your old furniture’s practical value
If you have stylish and comfortable furniture that perfectly suits your needs and your aesthetic preferences, you will most certainly want to keep it and take it to your new place. If your old couch is lumpy and worn-out, however, you will probably prefer a new one for your new home.
So, to make your final decision, you need to find the answers to the following crucial questions:
- Is your old furniture functional and comfortable?
- Is it high quality and durable?
- Is it in good overall condition? – There is no point in moving an old item only to replace it for a new one a couple of years later – if a furniture piece is on its last legs, relocating it won’t be worth the money and the effort involved in the process, no matter how practical and useful it might be;
- Will it fit your new home’s layout? – It is very important to measure the doors and the available space in your new home, as well as the size of your furniture, in order to make sure that a certain piece will fit through the doors and into the room where it is supposed to be located – if it doesn’t fit in, you should not take it along, regardless of how much you like it.
SEE ALSO: Why create a floor plan before moving
Your old furniture’s sentimental value
The sentimental value of a piece may be the primary factor in your decision whether to move it or not. You will probably not want to part with a treasured family heirloom or an item associated with an important moment in your life, no matter how difficult or expensive it may be to relocate the piece.
So, when making your decision, you need to consider if:
- an old furniture piece is a family heirloom, passed down from one generation to the next for several decades or, maybe, even several centuries;
- it triggers happy memories from the past or reminds you of someone or something special;
- it is a favorite of yours (or of another member of your family);
- it is a stylish, beautiful item you want to hold onto.
Your old furniture’s monetary value
While moving furniture is expensive, buying new furniture is even more expensive – especially when it comes to high quality pieces. Therefore, the financial worth of your old pieces should also be kept in mind when considering your options:
- Is your furniture piece expensive?
- Is it an antique, a vintage item, or a collector’s item?
- Is it an exquisite piece of art?
- Is it made of quality materials and crafted with skill and care?
- Was it made by a famous manufacturer?
If in doubt, you may have your old furniture evaluated by a professional in order to get an accurate idea of its actual worth.
The risk of damage to your furniture
If the risk of damaging your old furniture during the relocation process is too high, it may be better not to move it, even if it has high practical, sentimental, or monetary value – after all, a broken piece is of no good to anyone. So, if a furniture item is impossible to disassemble and is too large, too heavy, too awkwardly shaped, or too delicate to survive the relocation safe and unscathed, you may want to leave it behind.
The cost of moving your furniture
More often than not, it will be the cost of moving your old piece that will determine your final decision.
Is it cheaper to move furniture or buy new?
Once again, it depends on several important factors:
Relocation distance
If you’re moving locally, it will be probably better to keep your existing furniture. Local moves are considerably less expensive than long distance moves, so moving your old items to your new home will almost certainly be cheaper than buying new ones.
If you’re moving cross country, the final moving cost will depend on the weight of your shipment. So, the larger and heavier an item is – like most furniture – the more it will cost to ship. Therefore, it may be financially wiser to leave your old pieces behind and buy new ones after the relocation. In order to be sure, though, you need to do a little research:
- get a few moving estimates to determine exactly how much it would cost you to relocate your items;
- browse through the Internet and some furniture store pamphlets to get an idea of the cost of new furniture items;
- do not forget to figure in the delivery fee (as well as all the time and effort involved in the selection process) when calculating the cost of replacing your furniture.
Good to remember: If you decide not to take your furniture with you, you’re strongly recommended to sell as many of your old pieces as you can before the move. The money you get will help pay for the new furnishing you’re going to buy after the relocation and you will rest assured that your cherished old items have found a new purpose.
Complexity of the job
The more difficult to move a piece is, the more expensive it will be to relocate, of course:
- A delicate or oddly-shaped item will require careful handling, higher quality packing materials and, sometimes, even custom packing services, such as crating, for example. All these things will incur extra costs;
- A large, heavy piece will have to be disassembled for the move. Unless you can do this yourself, you’ll have to pay the professionals for the additional service;
- A furniture piece that doesn’t fit through the door may have to be taken out of the home through a window with the help of specialized rigging and hoisting equipment (which will cost you dearly);
- A special item (an antique, a grandfather clock, a piano, a pool table, etc.) will require the services of specialized movers.
All in all, the longer it takes to prepare a furniture item for shipment, the more specialized services its relocation requires, and the more packing materials are necessary for ensuring its safety, the higher the moving cost will be.
Value of the item
It is only logical that relocating a valuable old piece will be much cheaper than buying a new one of similar quality.
And yet, the decision is yours, of course. Make sure you never regret it.
I like that you mention that it may not be cost-effective to move your old furniture a long distance. Moving it across the country or internationally also raises the chance that it will get damaged. my husband and I are building a home a few states away and we want to buy new furniture once our home is ready. It just doesn’t seem worth it to hold onto our old furniture.
This is an excellent article. I’ve been looking for exactly this information. The only problem for me is I’m relocating from Hawaii to the mainland and it’s been difficult to determine exactly what’s worth moving or not since everything has to go into a container on a ship instead of on a truck. And everything here seems to be at least 30% more expensive. I’m assuming this also applies to any moving help or supplies. And I haven’t been able to find anything specific.
It’s asking a lot but I sure wish there was something that have examples like “from door to door it’ll cost around $1000 to move a standard couch from Hawaii to the West coast”.
I guess I’m just going to have to commit to an in-person estimate.
How difficult is it to sell your furniture?
When my mom moved, she gave away her kitchen table and couches and bought new ones for her new house. My husband and I are moving this year, but I’d like to take my furniture with me. Thanks for the advice to consider the cost of moving versus the cost of replacing. Like you mentioned, I will try to disassemble the bigger pieces, but will plan on paying an additional fee if I can’t do it myself.
My parents are planning to move to their new home that’s smaller because they are having a hard time maintaining their current home. It was suggested here that they should keep the old furniture with sentimental value. Moreover, it’s recommended to hire professionals when dealing with household moving.
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I did not know that the final moving cost for moving furniture will depend on the weight of your shipment, which means the heavier it is, the more expensive. My wife and I are planning on moving from a few states away from where we currently live, and we have been debating between moving our furniture or buying all new when we arrive at our new home. Since we are traveling a far distance, it might be smarter for us to buy brand new.
Thanks for advising your readers that buying or relocating their furniture will still depend on them. As you’ve said it’s logical to relocate valuable furniture but if not, then it’s best to buy a brand new one. My sister is relocating to a new state and found out that the relocation of her old furniture is more expensive than buying a brand new one with the same brand and quality. She just decided to buy a brand new one.
Thank you for explaining that if you are moving across the country, then the extra weight of furniture could be more costly than buying new furniture. My husband and I are moving to a new home, and we don’t know what we should do without couches. Thanks for the article, we will be sure to look into the costs, but probably look into buying furniture in our new town.
My husband and I are planning on moving soon but we didn’t know what we should do with our furniture. I didn’t think to ask questions like “Is your furniture made of quality materials and crafted with skill and care?” to determine if we want to take it with us or not. Most of our furniture is older and could probably go to the dump; I also don’t mind making the investment of new furniture since we’re “opening a new chapter in life.”
I love that you made a checklist for people to decide if their furniture is worth saving. I didn’t even think about the monetary value of my furniture! There’s a lot of antiques that people don’t realize are worth so much, so it’s always good to check. I’ll keep this in mind if I ever move again.
I thought that it was interesting that you explained that moving your old furniture when getting a new house causes too much of a risk for damage. I would imagine that ordering new furniture to be delivered to your new home would provide stress-free convenience during the moving process. I would be sure to consider buying new furniture for my home instead of moving old furniture so that I don’t have damaged furniture and to avoid being stressed.
It’s interesting to know that you need to consider if where you are moving to before deciding if you need to sell your furniture or take it with you. My husband told me that we need to move to another city, and we are looking for advice about what would be cheaper. I believe that since we are not moving very far, the wiser choice will be to hire a moving company and take everything with us.
Great points.. relocating for a job is a lot more expensive because now it’s no longer tax deductible. It can also be a bit risky also..
We considered a uhaul, but we didn’t have a place finalized at the destination. That would have entailed getting all the junk loaded and unloaded in a storage place at the destination only to have to do it all over when we found a place. (Time money and a lot of work)
Note: at the time I was six weeks post OP from a femur fracture, so everyone’s situation will be different.
DW’s mom drove us 1000 miles from the midwest to northwest with what just fit in car.
We spent the first three weeks in a motel until we found a apartment. hotel, deposits, furniture, (walmart “Mainstays” showroom ) – it all adds up…
The only real expensive thing we got was bed (the mattress really makes a difference in sleep quality) funny thing is DW slept better in original mattress.
You really have to shop around on Recliners and sofas but can probably get a good ones for 300-500.
We considered renting a pod but there are the also the logistics and costs of that (not cheap)
Probable spent 10k on everything…
So, in short, it boils down to how much work your willing/can put into the move.. if you have the motivation to do most of the “heavy lifting” and transportation.. then it shouldn’t cost you as much as it did us.
If I had to do it over, I wouldn’t have slipped on ice in February. although If that was the case might have taken that job in Washington DC .. now thats paradise! (JK)
I love your tip about having it be crafted with care. My house doesn’t have any cool furniture. I’ll have to get a sofa with red frills.
Thanks for the tip to consider the relocation distance when moving. My husband and I are planning a long distance move soon. Your article helped me see that it’ll be better for us to buy, custom furniture after the move.
My sister is insisting that we should buy new living room furniture for our new home because the old ones have many molds already and are starting to rot away at its sides. You’re right about saying that there’s no point in keeping them because I’ll have them replaced eventually. I think I’ll buy a furniture set so that I can make sure that everything will have a uniform look to it.
I like what you said about getting new furniture if your old pieces are on their last legs. My brother has been telling me about how he’s moving into a new house in a few weeks, and he wants to make sure that he has the right furniture. I’ll share this information with him so that he can look into his options for getting some new couches.
I like what you said about looking through furniture store pamphlets to help you determine how much new items will cost. My sister has been telling me about how she’s moving soon. I’ll share this information with her so that she can look into her options for getting new furniture for her new home.