Moving in Cherokee County

Start your water account — and note the deposit is due a day early

Cherokee County Water and Sewerage Authority needs the deposit in hand at least one day before service starts: $50 plus a $25 transfer fee if you own, $100 plus $25 if you rent, with a copy of the lease. They also do not disconnect on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday or holiday — so a Friday move-out has to be called in by Thursday. Canton, Woodstock and Holly Springs run their own systems inside the city limits; the county authority covers the rest.

Find out who your electricity actually comes from

Four providers serve Cherokee County — Cobb EMC, Sawnee EMC, Amicalola EMC and Georgia Power — and which one serves a house depends on the address, not the town. Two homes on the same street can differ. Ask the seller or the landlord which company bills the property rather than guessing from the city name.

Reserve your totes for the week you pack, not the week you move

Packing takes longer than anyone plans for. Book delivery a few days before you intend to start, and the first week covers delivery, collection, wash and prep — later weeks are charged at the lower holding rate.

Ask your new school what it needs before the last day at the old one

Records requests are faster to start while you are still enrolled somewhere. Cherokee County School District publishes its registration requirements, including what counts as proof of residency.

File the change of address with USPS

Forwarding takes a few days to start, so filing it two weeks out means nothing important lands at an address you no longer hold.

Arrange trash pickup — nobody arrives with a bin

There is no single county trash service. Depending on the address it comes through your city or through a private hauler you sign up with yourself, and neither one starts on its own. Sort it before you move in or the first week is a pile of bags in the garage.

Update the address on anything that bills you

Banks, insurance, the pharmacy, the vet, subscriptions. Working through it two weeks out turns it into an evening rather than a month of forwarded mail.

Pack the rooms you are not using

Guest room, storage, off-season clothes, books. Roughly a third of a house can be packed two weeks early without changing how you live in it.

Pack one room at a time, and finish it before you start the next

Rooms unpack the way they are packed. A tote holding one room is a tote somebody can carry straight to where it belongs.

Label every tote for its destination room, not its contents

On the far end, nobody is reading a list. They are reading a word and carrying the tote through a door.

Keep one tote for the first night and load it last

Bedding, chargers, medication, coffee, toilet paper, a change of clothes each. It comes off the truck first.

Photograph anything with a cable behind it

Televisions, routers, desks. The photograph is the reassembly instructions, and it takes four seconds.

Stack totes with the heaviest at the bottom, four high at most

They lock shut and stack square, which is the whole reason a wall of totes rides better than a wall of cardboard.

Walk the empty house before you close the door

Closets, the attic hatch, behind doors, the dishwasher, the medicine cabinet, the mailbox.

Take a meter reading at both addresses

A photograph of the water and power meters on the day settles any billing question later without a phone call.

Change the address on your driver’s licence — Georgia gives you 60 days

It is a legal requirement, not a suggestion, and the first change in a renewal period is free if you have more than six months left on the licence. Doing it in the first week means it is done; the 60 days go quickly.

Update your voter registration

Same visit, same information, and it keeps you at the right precinct.

Unpack the kitchen and the beds first

A house where you can cook and sleep feels finished long before it is. Everything else can wait a week.

Book your tote collection, or keep them another week

Collection is set when you book. If unpacking is taking longer, extra weeks are charged at the holding rate rather than the full first-week price.