# Preparing for clearance day: the checklist

A prepared clearance takes half the time of an improvised one. You don't need to move anything heavy — that's our job. You just need a few decisions made in advance, because the time that gets lost is almost always time spent asking "does this go or not".

A few days before

Decide what stays and mark it. A piece of masking tape on the objects that stay, or a single room where you put everything that gets saved. If it's clear at a glance, we don't stop to ask.

Empty the drawers and the furniture. It doesn't have to be perfect, but inside chests of drawers, sideboards and wardrobes there's always something you later regret losing: documents, photographs, jewellery, keys, cash. Look in coat pockets too, and behind the big furniture.

Set aside documents and valuables, and take them out of the house beforehand. Not because there's a risk, but on a day of loading and unloading an envelope left on a table can end up where it shouldn't.

Tell the neighbours or the building manager. If there's a lift we'll use, or a courtyard where the van needs to park, better to mention it in advance. In the historic centres of Foggia and the towns of the Capitanata, streets are often narrow, and knowing in advance where the van will go solves half a day of problems.

Check if you need a parking permit. If there's no space in front of the door, it has to be requested from the municipality a few days ahead. If we have to handle it, we need to know beforehand.

The evening before

Clear the corridor and the stairs. The passage we use has to be empty: shoes, rugs, bicycles, plant pots. Three metres of clear corridor save an hour.

Check there's light and water. If the flat has been empty for a while and the meter is disconnected, in a cellar or a windowless garage you can't see anything. If it can't be reconnected, say so: we'll bring lamps.

Get the keys ready. Front door, flat, cellar, garage, storage box. If the cellar keys are somewhere in a drawer, looking for them the next day with us in the house is wasted time.

Take two photos of the rooms. They're more useful to you than to us: before and after, in case you then have to hand the property over to an agency or a notary.

On the day itself

One person should be present, at least at the start and at the end. They don't have to do anything, just be able to answer two or three questions and check at closing.

Children and pets are better elsewhere. We go in and out constantly with furniture in our hands and the doors stay open.

If something turns up during the work that you hadn't planned for and you don't know whether to throw it, set it aside instead of deciding in a hurry. We look at it together at the end.

At closing we walk through the rooms together. The space is left swept and empty, and if something doesn't add up we fix it while we're still there, not the next day on the phone.

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