Guides · Moving · 13 min read · Updated September 2026

Moving house

The tradition moved house as a rite and the research describes it as a stressor, and both are right. The almanac’s day for entering a house, the stove and the rice pot that go in first, the bed settled on its own day and slept in that night, the door dressed, the meal with the door open; the old house left clean; the order in which to unpack a home so that the first night is a night; and what the studies of residential moves say about children and the first year.

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Wood

Fig. 01 A box at the door. The tradition’s moving day begins at the threshold and, once across it, at the stove.

A move is the one day on which a household does all of feng shui at once: it chooses a day, crosses a threshold, lights a stove, places a bed, dresses a door and eats a meal, and the tradition turned each of those into a rite because each of them is, in fact, the beginning of something. This guide gives the moving day as the almanac and the households keep it, then the same day as a removal firm would plan it, and finds that the two orders are one. It ends with what the research says a move costs, which is more than the tradition admits and less than it fears.

The day

The almanac, the tong shu, lists entering a house, ru zhai, among its standard items, with its own good and bad days, and lists settling the bed, an chuang, separately, so that a household may move on one day and install the bed on another; Palmer’s translation of the almanac gives both headings, and the choosing a day essay gives the twelve officers by which the days are sorted. For a move the manuals favour the officers that fix and complete: Settle, whose gloss is a house moved into; Complete; and Open, and they forbid Break and Danger. The day should not clash with the birth animal of the head of the household, which the almanac prints against each date, and the move should not be made towards the year’s Tai Sui, the direction of the Grand Duke, which the same page gives. Ruitenbeek’s edition of the carpenters’ classic, the Lu Ban jing, carries the older form of the tables, for raising a ridge beam and entering a finished house, and shows the two dates were once one trade’s.

The day, in order

Fig. 01 The moving day as the tradition keeps it, in the order it keeps it. First the day, taken from the almanac under the heading “entering the house”, on an officer that settles, completes or opens and never on one that breaks, and clear of the household’s clash animals. Second the stove: the first thing carried over the threshold is the kitchen’s, the rice pot full and the fire lit before anything else is unpacked, so that the house has eaten before it has furniture. Third the bed, settled against its wall on its own almanac day, and slept in that first night by the whole household, because a house that is not slept in is not yet lived in. Fourth the door, dressed with its couplets and its door gods, which tell the street who has arrived. Fifth the meal, the warming of the house, eaten with the door open and the table full. The sequence is a rite of passage in van Gennep’s sense, a leaving, a threshold and an entering, and it is also, read as a checklist, the order in which a house becomes usable. The headings are the almanac’s: entering the house and settling the bed are two of its standard items, each with its own good and bad days, and the Cantonese call the whole rite entering the fire, yap fo, after the stove. The details vary by region; the order does not.

The rite has an order and every region keeps it, whatever it adds. The first thing over the threshold is the stove’s: in the Cantonese form, which names the whole day entering the fire, yap fo, after it, the rice bucket goes in full with a red packet on its lid, the stove or the rice cooker is set up, the fire lit and water boiled before anything else is unpacked, so that the house has cooked before it has furniture; the Kitchen God, whose page the kitchen guide gives, goes up over the stove the same hour. The bed is settled next, against its wall, head to the solid side, on its own day if the almanac gives one, and the whole household sleeps in the house that night, because a house that has not been slept in is not yet moved into; Knapp’s survey of the house’s beliefs records the bed-settling and the first night from province to province, with the pomelo-leaf wash, the salt and rice at the corners and the lamps left burning through the first evening as the regional additions. The door is dressed, with the couplets and the door gods the front door guide draws, which tell the street who has arrived. And the house is warmed: the family and its friends eat at a full table with the door open, the meal the Chinese call warming the house and every other tradition calls the same thing. The old house is left swept, with nothing broken in it and, in the folk rule, without its old broom, which stays; a house is left as it should be found, and a family does not carry its dust.

The same day, as a plan

Plan 02 The first day, drawn before the van A flat of ten metres by seven, with the front door on the right. The plan is drawn before the move, with the two positions that matter decided on paper: the bed against the bedroom’s solid wall with the door in view, and the sofa against the living room’s wall facing the room, both as dashed outlines that the movers carry the furniture straight into. The rooms are numbered in the order they are made usable on the day: the bedroom first, so that the first night is a night; the kitchen second, with the stove lit and the kettle on before the boxes are opened; the bathroom third, towels and soap; the living room last, because nobody needs it until the evening. The route from the door to the bedroom is kept clear of boxes, which go against the walls of the rooms they belong to and nowhere else. The tradition’s order and the removal firm’s are the same order.

Read as a checklist, the rite is the order a removal firm would give, and the drawing above is that order as a plan. It is drawn before the van, which is the one instruction that matters: the two positions the tradition cares about, the bed with a solid wall behind it and the door in view, and the sofa with its back covered facing the room, are decided on paper, from the plan and a compass reading, so that the movers carry the furniture straight into place and nobody moves a bed twice; the bed placement and sofa placement guides give the positions, and the facing direction guide gives the reading. The bedroom is made first, sheets on, lamp lit, curtains up, so that the first night is a night and not a camp. The kitchen is second, with the kettle on before the boxes are opened, which is the stove rite in its modern dress. The bathroom is third, with a towel and soap. The living room is last, because nobody needs it until the evening. Boxes go against the walls of the rooms they belong to and nowhere else, the route from the door to the bedroom is kept clear, and the first box, the one carried by hand, holds the kettle, the sheets, a lamp, a knife, the tools and the paper for the bathroom. The pictures wait a week; the art guide says why a wall should be lived with before it is hung, and the mirrors wait longer.

What a move costs

Fig. 03 Holmes and Rahe’s Social Readjustment Rating Scale of 1967, the items a move touches drawn against the heaviest items on the list. The scale asked people to weight forty-three life events by the adjustment each demanded, with marriage set at fifty; a change of residence alone scores twenty, below a holiday and above Christmas, and no one would call it grave. But a move is seldom alone. A household that has bought a house has taken a mortgage, changed its living conditions, changed its residence, changed the children’s schools and, for the first weeks, changed how everyone sleeps and eats, and the six shaded items add to a hundred and twenty-seven, more than the scale gives the death of a spouse. The tradition’s three days of fire, bed and door, and its meal with the door open, are the parts of a move it could shorten. Holmes and Rahe 1967; the values are the original scale’s, and the mortgage item is the scale’s ‘mortgage over $10,000’, a large one in 1967. The sum is the site’s arithmetic and not the authors’; the scale was validated on totals over a year, and a move stacks its items in a month.

The drawing puts a move on the scale that measured it. Holmes and Rahe asked nearly four hundred people in 1967 to weight forty-three life events against marriage, set at fifty, and a change of residence came out at twenty, below a holiday and above Christmas. The number is small because the scale weighs the move and not what comes with it: a household that has bought a house has taken a mortgage, changed its living conditions, changed its address, changed the children’s schools and, for the first weeks, changed how everyone sleeps and eats, and the six items together come to a hundred and twenty-seven, above the scale’s heaviest single event. The tradition never had the scale and knew the sum; its three days, its meal with the door open and its bed settled on a day of its own are the parts of a move it found it could shorten.

Evidence · A move is a life event

Holmes and Rahe’s scale of 1967 asked people to weight forty-three life events by the adjustment each demanded, and a change in residence scored twenty of a hundred, with a change in living conditions at twenty-five and a mortgage at thirty-one; a move stacks several of the scale’s items in a month, which is why it is felt as more than the boxes. Oishi’s review of the psychology of residential mobility finds that people who moved often as children report lower well-being as adults, most if they are introverts, and that what is lost in a move is relationships rather than rooms, which the tradition’s meal with the door open is a way of beginning to rebuild. Jelleyman and Spencer’s systematic review of twenty-two studies finds frequent moves in childhood associated with behavioural and emotional problems, and the association is with the number of moves, not with any one. None of this is about the day chosen. All of it is about the year after, and the tradition’s three days of airing, lighting and cooking are a small, sound start on it.

Moving, in order

Draw the plan before the van. Decide the bed and the sofa on paper, with a compass reading, so that the furniture is carried into place once.
Choose the day for the household, then look it up. Settle, Complete or Open in the almanac if it can be managed; not Break or Danger; never at night; not while expecting, if it can wait.
Fire first. The kettle or the rice pot over the threshold before the boxes, and something cooked before anything is unpacked.
The bed, and the first night in it. Sheets, lamp, curtains; the whole household sleeps in the house on the day it is entered.
The door dressed, the meal eaten. Couplets or a wreath or a name on the bell; a table with friends and the door open, in the first week.
The old house left clean. Swept, nothing broken left behind, the keys handed over as you would wish to receive them.
Three days of living. Windows in the morning, lamps at dusk, the stove used; the pictures wait a week and the mirrors longer.
A year of the rest. The neighbours, the school, the street: the research says these are what a move costs; the door open at the meal is the tradition’s way of beginning to pay it back, and no study has priced it.