The return is already decided by now
Not the date — the shape. What you bring, what you store, how it is listed and where it is listed all determine what leaving involves, and every one of those is being decided while you are focused on arriving.
A survey that only looks at the outward leg is answering half the question.
Keep one inventory, for the whole term
Not one for the move in, another for the storage, and a third improvised at the end. One list, maintained across the term, so that leaving is a reconciliation rather than an archaeological dig.
This is the single most common failure on assignment moves and it is entirely administrative. Nothing about it is difficult; it simply has to be somebody’s job from the start.
Watch where things end up
Over a run of postings, households scatter. It is genuinely common for a family to have belongings in three places and to be paying for two of them without quite meaning to.
- Write down what is in store, where, and who is paying for it.
- Consolidate at each move rather than adding another location.
- Set a rule about what earns its storage. Things that have not been wanted through a whole posting rarely start being wanted.
- If something is in a relative’s loft, say so out loud. Those are the items that vanish.
Plan around the school year, not the lease
For families here on postings the binding constraint is almost always school places rather than tenancy dates. The long breaks are the workable windows; the edges of terms are the crowded ones.
A lease can usually be flexed a little. A school place generally cannot.
Hold the return date loosely, but hold it
You will not know when you are leaving. That is fine — book provisionally anyway, move it as often as it needs moving, and cancel it without ceremony if the posting extends.
A provisional booking costs nothing and it is the only part of an assignment timetable you control.