Moving house: every document and address to update

A move scatters your paperwork twice — once into boxes, and once by quietly making every document with your old address on it slightly wrong. The second scattering is the one with deadlines.

The documents to update when moving house sort into three piles: the ones with legal deadlines, the ones that cost money if they lag, and the long tail that can follow at leisure. Work the piles in that order and a move sheds most of its administrative menace.

Before the truck: two that must not lag

USPS mail forwarding — file the change-of-address a week or two ahead, effective moving day. Forwarding runs for a year on most mail; its second job is diagnostic, because every forwarded envelope is an account you haven't updated yet. The trickle tells you what the long tail contains.
Home and auto insurance — the one item that must move with you, not after. The new home needs coverage from its closing or lease date, and auto premiums are priced partly by where the car sleeps, so an un-updated address can mean misrated — in bad cases contestable — coverage. Renters insurance likewise. One call handles all of it before the boxes seal.

The first weeks: the deadline pile

Driver's license and vehicle registration — states set deadlines for new residents, commonly somewhere between 10 and 90 days, and they vary widely; check your new state's DMV rather than assuming. In-state moves usually just need the address updated, often online.
Voter registration — moves with your license update in many states, but confirm; election-day surprises are cheap to prevent and miserable to fix.
The IRS and tax agencies — form 8822 updates your federal address so notices and refunds don't chase the old one. States have equivalents. The stakes are unglamorous: tax mail sent to a stale address doesn't stop being binding.
Employer, bank, and card issuers — payroll, tax forms, replacement cards, and fraud alerts all follow this address. Ten minutes of logged-in edits.

The documents a move creates

A move isn't just address churn — it mints paperwork worth keeping deliberately:

Buying: closing documents and the deed (keep effectively forever — see retention), inspection reports, and every home-improvement receipt from day one, which quietly reduce taxable gain decades from now.
Renting: the lease, the condition/inventory report, and dated move-in photos — the whole security-deposit case in three items. The old place generates the mirror set: final utility bills and the deposit-return correspondence.
The movers': the inventory and valuation paperwork is your claim basis for anything that arrives broken; it expires from usefulness fast, so photograph damage on delivery day.

The long tail

Subscriptions, deliveries, medical providers and pharmacy transfers, schools and records requests, pet microchip registries, professional licenses, and the dozen accounts the forwarded mail will reveal one envelope at a time. None is urgent; together they're why forwarding runs a year. Chip away as envelopes arrive and the tail closes itself.

Where Drawer fits

A move is when a household most wishes its documents weren't in six places — and when the new lease, closing stack, and insurance confirmations arrive all at once. Forward or snap them into Drawer as they appear and the household keeps one findable set through the chaos, with the new dates (registration deadline, lease renewal, policy start) watched from day one. Private beta; waitlist here.

Questions people actually ask

How long do I have to update my driver's license after moving?

It depends on the state more than people expect — new-resident deadlines commonly range from about 10 to 90 days, and in-state address updates have their own rules. The new state's DMV site is the only answer that counts; treat any list you read (including this one) as a prompt to check, not a source.

Does USPS forwarding cover everything while I update accounts?

First-class mail forwards for a year on a standard change-of-address, which covers the transition — but some mail classes don't forward the same way, and government agencies often require direct notification regardless. Treat forwarding as the safety net and the diagnostic, not the update itself.

What should I keep from the old place after moving out?

The deposit case and the tax trail: final utility bills, the move-out condition evidence, deposit correspondence, and — if you sold — the closing documents and the improvement-receipt file, which feed the gain calculation on the sale. Most everything else about the old address retires on the normal retention clocks.