Why the gap happensThe chain
Exchange and completion are two different days, and in a chain the second one is decided by the slowest solicitor in it. A sale can complete on the Friday and the purchase on the following Wednesday. A rented property can end on the last day of the month while the new one starts on the fourth. A probate sale can complete with nobody able to receive the contents for a fortnight. In every one of those cases the contents have to be somewhere that is not a hallway, and somebody has to be able to say exactly what is in it.
Short-hold means the storage is part of the same job and is described on the same sheet, with the load going in as loaded and coming out in the order the next address needs it. It is not a self-storage tenancy, there is no unit with your own padlock, and the household does not come and go.
Inventoried in, not just put downIn
A load that goes into store is counted at the door of the store, against the inventory written at the origin. Carton counts per room are read out and ticked, furniture items are called off one at a time, and any condition note made at the origin is read again at the store so that it belongs to the right end of the job. The result is a signed list of what went in, dated, with the store position written on it.
Written at the point of storing
- Cartons in, by room
- counted and ticked
- Furniture items
- called off singly
- Condition notes carried over
- from the origin sheet
- Store position
- so it can be found
- Date in, and expected date out
- both, in writing
- Who may release it
- named at the time of storing
Nothing leaves store on a telephone call from somebody who is not on that line.
How a held load is stackedIn store
A stored load is stacked the same way a van is loaded, for the same reasons: heavy and square at the bottom, cartons in a flat tier, upholstery on edge and wrapped, mattresses bagged and upright, nothing resting on a cushion or a polished top. The difference is time. A stack that is fine for forty minutes of transit is not necessarily fine for three weeks, so the tiers are built lower, pallets or bearers keep everything off the floor, and anything with a leg that could sink into a cushion gets a board under it.
What store will not takeRefused
The refusals are wider than the van’s, because time makes some things worse. Nothing that can leak, ripen, rust or attract anything goes into a held load.
- Anything perishable — food of any kind, opened or sealed, and anything that was in a freezer.
- Liquids — including cleaning products, part-used paint and anything in a bottle that was opened once.
- Batteries and anything containing one — tools, scooters, hobby kit; batteries come out and travel with the household.
- Anything damp — garden furniture straight off a wet patio, a wetsuit, a bag of washing; damp goes into a sealed stack and comes out as mould.
- Fuel, gas and pressurised containers — the same list the van refuses, on the packing sheet.
Access while held, and how the period endsOut
Getting at a stored load is possible but it is an appointment, not a key. A held stack is built to be stable, not to be walked into, so retrieving one carton means somebody taking a tier down and building it back, and that is arranged in advance and written on the sheet when it happens. The alternative, which is usually better, is deciding at the origin what rides in the car.
The period ends on the day the next address can receive the load, and the load comes out against the same list it went in on, ticked in the other direction. Anything that cannot be accounted for is written down at the store before the van leaves, not discovered at the far end, because that is the only moment both lists and both stacks are in the same place. What the office keeps of all this afterwards is on the records page.