I had almost the same thing happen to me, except that after we moved in the guy just started stealing our mail along with his. I found out when the letter carrier became suspicious of the number of names going to our address. He intercepted me while I was doing yard work and explained the situation: apparently there are people who use the addresses of vacant houses as physical addresses for online scams, and in all likelihood the stolen mail included checks from the victims. He handed me the mail in my name and suggested I put a few pieces of junk in the box to see if it disappeared. Indeed it did! After that the letter carrier automatically returned to sender any mail not in our name, at least for a few weeks. It’s a strange situation, but basically if you’re buying a house which had stood vacant for any time at all you may want to keep this in mind.

Plus if you need to tell someone your new address it’s a quick reference and you don’t have to worry about paper and pens to write it out each time.

Since you have little ones, a diaper bag with extra diapers, wipes and a few of your child’s favorite toys/blankets/books to keep them occupied.

This will save frustration and time while you are diggging for the boxes you thought you labeled correctly(now where did that box go?!)

In my recent house purchase, no one had paid the bills for 6 months. There were ‘we will take you to court and cut off your supply’ letters. Its not a problem to get the records amended, you just need to do it straight away.

Unfortunately, in the emotional high of moving into a new house, we tend to forget the STLI (small things, large impact) things.

Congratulations on the new house.

I actually have written directions to my house from all 4 points of the compass, so each person gets the most efficient set, but that may be overkill.

I have the same problem and when I moved out I had to call up every person/company that sends me mail and change my address. You can also use company websites to change your address quickly and easily in many cases. You do not want to use a post office change of address form in this case as you already found out. In your case, you may want to try to cancel the mail forwarding from the PO and your father will probably have to call the senders that have already changed his address to have it changed back. I don’t know how the PO handles changes of address so it might not be that simple but I’m sure there’s a way. Good luck.

Lani – in the mortgage business

Trust me, that list can save a marriage.

When we move (hopefully never), we’ll leave a map with neighbors’ names for the next homeowner.