overwhelmed newbie question

so i will be moving to belfast in january.  am very excited but also very intimidated with the moving process.  i don't plan on bringing or shipping a ton.  just clothes, shoes, cds, dvds, books, some personel effects.  what would be your advice on the best way to ship things?? USPS?  UPS? also, i am stuck in that i am taking a job and will not have a permanent place to live until after i get there.  my job offers short term accomadation until i find a place (furnished).  how do i handle not having an address for things that i want shipped?  i am guessing that i don't have much of an alternative then to have my family ship them for for me?

thanks for any insight you can provide me!!

sue, overwhelmed

Hi Sue,

Hopefully someone here will have some answers for you. I shipped one package and it was 2 framed pieces that I got as a gift from my husband. Then I sold everything that didn't fit in my luggage so I really have no experience in shipping things. Have you tried looking through some of the old threads though? I have seen questions like this come up fairly often.

As for the address thing, you can try asking your place of employment if they have somewhere you could send it, otherwise I can't think of anything else you could do other than have your family send it when you get an address. And, if you don't want to pay a fortune, you'll probably want to send it by surface (ship) which will take about 2 months.

Good luck!

I used USPS -- sent about 10 boxes for $600.  They all arrived in a matter of weeks.

I used USPS -- sent about 10 boxes for $600.  They all arrived in a matter of weeks.

Lola, did you have anything breakable in your boxes?  Just wondering what kind of luck you had with the handling of them.  Also, I'm guessing you sent them airmail?

Breakable stuff...yes.  I sent all of our casual wedding china...gorgeous duck-egg blue Fiestaware.  We now have two lovely bowls.    So yeah, despite careful packaging, you may lose some breakable stuff.

I'm pretty sure most of mine were airmail...I think they arrived 2-3 weeks after I sent them.

Breakable stuff...yes.  I sent all of our casual wedding china...gorgeous duck-egg blue Fiestaware.  We now have two lovely bowls.   

OMG!  So sorry to hear about your Fiestaware.  Acutally I have no faith in shipping the breakable stuff.  For our wedding, we're registering for smallish things that we can stack and that will not break in a suitcase... like pots/pans/kitchen utensils.  When DF comes over for the wedding he'll be bringing a suitcase devoted to registry stuff and I'll also have one suitcase for that.  I'm studying abroad so fortunately I'll be able to leave most if not all my cold weather clothes like coats and big sweaters in the UK.  To move I'll just have to bring some medium-temperature weather clothes (? if that made sense).  The only thing that we're registering for that's breakable is our everyday dishes and we're going to manage to put them in our carry ons.  ( have a carry on size suitcase to pack full of them)  LOL we're taking enough to live for a few months (probably 8 of each) and then bringing the rest at Christmas when we come back.  It'll be a slow process but I would be really upset to have everything broken.  We're going to leave our good China in the US becuase we're planning on moving back for long term.  If decide to live in the UK for awhile we'll just have to deal with that later.     HEHE and that was probably TMI...