Moving furniture from home country – worth it?

9 comments

1. I moved to Japan directly from my parents home and left a fair amount of stuff behind. Around 3 months after moving the house burned down and pretty much all of my stuff was lost. Now, I’m not suggesting arson as a solution to the ‘what should I do with my stuff’ problem, but it was extremely convenient for me.

2. Sell it all. Only furniture we kept were our Herman Miller Embody chairs. Never giving those up.

3. Sold, gave away or trashed everything we did not bring to Japan. Well, that’s not 100% true, we have about 10 boxes of stuff packed away in my mom’s garage but all furniture is gone.

4. The only people I know who moved large items to Japan were those whose companies had a moving allowance. Otherwise, simply not worth it.

5. I had a lot of stuff, mainly thousands and thousands of books, that I didn’t want to get rid of. The cheapest way to get them to Japan was a container, and so there was space enough for furniture and other things, too. “Cheap” is relative, though.

6. Unless it was super expensive furniture or family heirlooms, get rid of it.

7. Note, I’m also saying this because I’ll admit my room back at home is rather IKEA/pinterest-y and actually worked hard on. 🥴 so trashing is not an option.

8. Only bring items that are far more expensive to replace in Japan, e.g., certain consumer electronics.

9. Most of our stuff was from ikea, so we sold it all before moving. IKEA-type furniture is not worth bringing over, unless your work is paying for a whole shipping container, you have plenty of room, and you know your new apartment will fit all the furniture.