Anybody who has lived here a few years ends up facing this question. You are going back, or moving somewhere smaller, and there you stand in your own living room doing sums: do I take it or not? Mostly that sum never gets made properly. You ring a remover, you flinch at the quote, and you decide the whole thing at once — everything goes, or everything stays.
But the answer differs piece by piece. Here is the calculation you can make yourself, with real figures.
What a move costs
Removers charge by volume, not by weight. You pay for the space your things take up in the lorry. These are the ranges for a run between Spain and the Netherlands, including fuel, tolls and insurance:
| Size | Roughly what that is | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 20 m³ | A flat, sparsely furnished | €2,250 – €3,900 |
| 20 to 40 m³ | A fully furnished house | €4,000 – €6,700 |
| 40 m³ and up | A house with a garage and a store room | €6,250 – €11,000 |
Tolls alone run €250 to €400 each way. Book two to three months ahead.
One real example from that source: Utrecht to Málaga, 42 cubic metres, fully packed and handled — €8,950. That works out at roughly two hundred euros per cubic metre, all in. That one number is the only thing you need to remember.
Rule of thumb: every cubic metre you take costs you about €200.
What that means per piece
A corner sofa is two to three cubic metres. A dining table with four chairs about two. A wardrobe two, a double bed two. Convert that and you know what taking it along costs:
| Piece | Space | Costs to take | Fetches here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corner sofa | ± 2.5 m³ | ± €500 | €290 – €420 |
| Dining table and chairs | ± 2 m³ | ± €400 | €140 – €425 |
| Wardrobe | ± 2 m³ | ± €400 | €80 – €250 |
| Bookcase | ± 0.7 m³ | ± €140 | €60 – €120 |
| Garden set | ± 1.5 m³ | ± €300 | €95 – €180 |
The figures on the right are asking prices for comparable second-hand furniture on this coast, October 2026.
The whole question sits in that table. Your big furniture costs about as much to move as it fetches here — and once you are back north you still have to buy replacements for the things you just gave away. That is the trap most people fall into: they ship the sofa that was worth four hundred here, pay five hundred to move it, and put it in a house where it does not fit.
What is worth taking
- Anything small and expensive: tools, electronics, a good bicycle. High value, little space.
- Anything you cannot replace: your grandmother's cabinet, the paintings, the photographs. No sum applies to those.
- Anything that costs more up north than here. That is a shorter list than you think — but white goods a few years old usually just about qualify.
And what to sell here
- Large furniture. Plenty of space, little residual value, and it rarely fits the next house.
- Everything to do with outdoors: garden furniture, parasols, the barbecue, pool things. Up north that sits in the way nine months of the year.
- Air conditioning, awnings, anything fixed in place. That belongs to the house, not to you.
Start early
This is the only advice here that actually makes you money: start three months out. Things that have to go by next week fetch half. Things that can sit for a few weeks fetch what they are worth. Across a whole household that difference is easily a thousand euros.
And remember your buyers live round the corner. A corner sofa sells to somebody in Torrox or Mijas who collects it this afternoon in a van — not to somebody who would have to ship it.