Book the things that run out

Almost everything on this list can be done late. These two cannot.

Book the mover. The last weekend of the month is the busiest slot in the industry and it goes first. A midweek date in the middle of the month is easier to get and usually cheaper. Get a written estimate now even if the date is not certain — requoting is free.
Read your lease or closing paperwork for the actual handover time. People plan a move around a date and discover the keys are not available until 3pm.
Check the building rules at both ends. Many apartment buildings require a lift reservation, a certificate of insurance from the mover, and a move window that does not include Sundays. Ask the leasing office now, not the week before.
Start getting rid of things. You pay to move every box. This is the single biggest lever you have on the cost, and it only works if you start early enough to actually sell or donate rather than panic-binning.

Four weeks out

Deal with the admin

Utilities. Schedule the disconnect at the old place for the day after you move and the connect at the new place for the day before. Overlapping by a day costs almost nothing and prevents moving into a house with no power.
Change of address with the postal service, then separately with your bank, employer, insurer, doctor, and anything on a subscription. Mail forwarding is a safety net, not a solution.
Confirm parking. If your street needs a temporary no-parking permit for the truck, find out what to file and when. In some cities this takes a couple of weeks. A truck parked three blocks away turns a long carry into an expensive one.
Book time off. Take the moving day and the day after. The day after is the one people skip and then regret.
Arrange children and animals for the day. A moving day with a toddler or a frightened cat in the house is a genuinely harder day for everyone, and open doors are how pets get out.

Three to two weeks out

Pack the things you are not using

Pack room by room, not category by category, and label every box with the room it is going to rather than the room it came from. That one habit is the difference between an unload that takes an hour and one that takes three.

Start with storage, the loft and the spare room — anything you will not miss.
Books in small boxes, bedding in big ones. A big box of books cannot be lifted safely and will burst.
Fill every box to the top with something soft. Half-empty boxes collapse when stacked, which is what actually breaks things.
Tape the bottom of every box in both directions. One strip down the seam is not enough for anything heavy.
Photograph the back of your television and anything else with cables before unplugging it.
Keep screws and fittings in a labelled bag taped to the furniture they belong to.
Tell the mover about anything unusual now — a piano, a safe, a treadmill, an aquarium. Discovered on the day, these cost more and can delay everything else.

One week out

Run down the house

Eat the freezer. Frozen food does not travel and cannot be refrozen safely.
Confirm the arrival window with the mover, and confirm your parking and lift reservation are still booked.
Set aside what is not going on the truck. Movers cannot legally carry petrol, gas cylinders, paint thinner, fireworks or ammunition, and will not carry perishables or plants that would spoil. Deal with these now rather than on the driveway.
Pack an essentials box and an overnight bag. These travel with you, not on the truck: medication, chargers, documents, keys, a change of clothes, toilet paper, soap, a towel, coffee and whatever makes it possible to make coffee, plus a knife for opening boxes.
Service anything that needs draining — a washing machine, a fridge with a water line, a lawnmower.

The day before

Finish packing, properly

A half-packed house on moving day is the most expensive thing on this list. The crew ends up boxing under time pressure, at an hourly rate, and doing it worse than you would have. Whatever else slips, finish the packing.

Strip the beds and bag the bedding.
Empty every drawer that is not in a dresser the crew has agreed to move loaded.
Charge your phone and everyone else's.
Put the essentials box and the overnight bag in your car, not by the front door where they will be helpfully loaded onto the truck.
Get some sleep. It is a longer day than people expect.

Moving day

Be present, not busy

Walk the crew leader through both floors before anything is lifted. Point out what is going, what is staying, what is fragile and what is already damaged. Damage noted before loading goes on the paperwork.
Keep one room clear as a staging area, and keep the path from door to truck clear too.
Stay reachable. You do not need to hover, but questions come up and every minute spent looking for you is on the clock.
Do a final sweep before the truck leaves — cupboards, the loft, behind doors, the dishwasher, the garden shed, the letterbox.
At the new place, direct boxes by room. This is why you labelled them by destination.
Walk through with the crew leader before they go and check the furniture is where you want it. Moving a wardrobe again later is much harder alone.

The day after

The bit everyone skips

Make the beds and set up the bathroom first. Everything else can wait; those two decide whether the first night feels like living there.
Check for damage while it is fresh and report anything to the mover straight away. Keep the item and its packing until any claim is settled.
Locate the stopcock, the fuse box and the boiler before you need them at 11pm.
Break down boxes as you empty them or you will be living in a cardboard fort for a month.
Leave the review you wish you had read. Whoever moved you, good or bad, the next person is making the same decision you just made with less information.

Pennsylvania specifics

A few items on this list work differently here, and they are the ones most likely to catch you out.

Check your mover's PA PUC authority. Household goods carriers operating inside Pennsylvania are licensed by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, and the register is public. A mover crossing into New Jersey, Delaware or New York instead needs federal USDOT authority. Both are worth two minutes of checking.
Philadelphia parking permits take time. If either end of your move is a city street, a temporary no-parking permit goes through the Philadelphia Parking Authority and needs filing well ahead. Add it to the four-week mark, not the one-week mark.
Household hazardous waste is collected by county. Bucks, Montgomery, Lehigh and Northampton all run their own collection events rather than accepting these at the kerb. Look up the next date early, because they are not weekly — see what movers won't move.
Township versus borough matters. In much of southeastern Pennsylvania your postal address does not tell you which municipality you are in. A Levittown address can sit in any of four. If anything needs arranging on the street, you need the actual township.
Transfer your driver's licence and registration within the required window after establishing residency, and update your voter registration at the same time.
Winter moves are a real consideration north and west of Philadelphia. Salt and slush track indoors and ruin floors faster than furniture does. Ask whether the crew brings extra floor protection.

What this list deliberately leaves out

There is no step here telling you to make a colour-coded spreadsheet of every item you own. Some people find that genuinely useful and most people start one, abandon it in week two, and feel bad about it. Labelling boxes by destination room gets you ninety percent of the benefit for five percent of the effort.

If you want the cost side of the planning too, how we price a move sets out what makes an estimate go up or down — several of the items on this checklist are on that list for a reason.

A moving checklist that matches how moves actually go