How to Decide What to Ship, Sell, or Store When Moving Abroad

A one-way ticket overseas creates a specific temptation: box up the whole house and let the shipper sort it out on the other end. That instinct is expensive. An international move charges by the cubic foot or by weight, so every item you load onto a container or pallet keeps costing you long after you’ve forgotten it’s in there. The smarter approach is to treat each thing you own as a decision: does it earn its place on the ship, does it get sold or given away before you go, or does it stay behind in U.S. storage until you know what you’re doing? This guide walks you through that decision so you cross the ocean with what actually belongs there.

We won’t get into shipping prices, transit methods, or customs paperwork here. For the dollars-and-volume side, see our guide on international move costs; for how your goods physically travel, see air vs. sea freight; for clearing customs at the other end, see our customs guide. This is purely about the keep-it, lose-it, or leave-it call.

Why “Ship Everything” Is Rarely the Right Call Overseas

A domestic move and an international one play by different math. When you move across town, hauling an extra dresser costs you a little more truck space and maybe an hour of labor. When you move across an ocean, the same dresser occupies volume on a shipment priced by how much room your goods take up. International moving companies typically base their cost on the volume or the weight of what’s shipped, according to the Federal Maritime Commission, the federal agency that oversees ocean transport to and from the United States. That single fact reshapes every choice. Cheap, bulky, or easily replaced items are the worst candidates for shipping, because you’re paying premium ocean rates to move things you could buy again for less at your destination.

There’s a second reason restraint pays off. The longer your inventory list, the more there is to declare, inspect, and potentially question at customs, and the more that can be lost or damaged in transit. A leaner shipment moves through the process with fewer complications. So before anything goes on the “ship” pile, it has to clear a simple bar: is this worth paying international freight rates to carry, and would I genuinely want it on the other side?

The Cost-to-Ship vs. Cost-to-Rebuy Test

The core of every decision is one comparison. For each significant item, weigh roughly what it costs to ship against what it would cost to buy a comparable version once you arrive. You don’t need exact figures to run this test; you need a sense of which way the scale tips.

Items lose the test when they’re bulky and cheap to replace. A pressboard bookshelf, a basic mattress, a set of dishes, a coffee maker, plastic storage bins, most small kitchen gadgets: these take up volume out of proportion to their value, and you can usually rebuy them affordably wherever you land. Paying to ship them rarely makes sense.

Items win the test when they’re compact relative to their value, hard to replace, or carry meaning you can’t price. Think jewelry, family heirlooms, important documents, a laptop, well-made tools, or a piece of furniture with real sentimental or monetary worth. These justify their freight cost.

A few practical wrinkles affect the math:

Where you’re landing matters. If you’re moving somewhere with high local prices or limited availability of what you use, the “rebuy” side gets more expensive, and shipping looks better. If you’re moving somewhere with cheap, abundant goods, selling and rebuying often wins.
Temporary versus permanent changes everything. A two-year assignment with a furnished apartment waiting for you is a very different calculation from a permanent relocation where you’re starting a household from scratch. Short stints favor traveling light and buying little; permanent moves can justify shipping the things you’ll live with for years.
Time has a cost too. Replacing a whole household at the destination takes weeks of shopping and setup. That hassle has value, and it can tip a close call toward shipping the things that get you functional fastest.

Run the test item by item for anything substantial. For the truly trivial, group it: “the contents of the junk drawer” almost never survives the comparison.

Electronics and Appliances: Voltage and Compatibility (110V vs. 220V)

This is where moves go wrong most often, because an appliance that works perfectly today can be useless or destroyed the moment you plug it in abroad. The United States runs household power at roughly 120 volts and 60 hertz. Much of the rest of the world runs at 220 to 240 volts and 50 hertz; the European Union standard is 230 volts. Plug a single-voltage U.S. appliance into a 230-volt outlet and you push far too much power into it, which can destroy the device immediately and even pose a fire risk. The plug shape is the least of your worries; the electricity behind the outlet is the real issue.

Before you decide to ship any electronic item, check its rating. Look for the small specification label or the printing on the power brick. If the input reads a range like “100–240V” (sometimes shown as “100-240V ~ 50/60Hz”), the device is dual-voltage and will work anywhere with nothing more than a plug-shape adapter. Most modern laptop, phone, tablet, and camera chargers fall into this category, which makes your everyday electronics easy to bring. If the label instead reads a single value like “120V” only, the device is single-voltage and will not safely run on foreign power without a heavy voltage converter, and even then frequency differences can shorten its life.

That frequency gap, 60 hertz here versus 50 hertz in much of the world, is the part people overlook. Anything with a motor or a clock that keeps time off the power line, including many older appliances, can run slow, overheat, or wear out faster on the wrong frequency, even with a voltage converter handling the volts. Large appliances are the clearest “leave it” candidates: a U.S. refrigerator, washer, dryer, microwave, or vacuum is bulky to ship, often incompatible with the destination’s power and water hookups, and frequently cheaper to replace abroad than to ship and adapt. Voltage and outlet standards vary from country to country, so confirm your specific destination’s voltage, frequency, and plug type with an official source before counting on any device.

What’s Worth Shipping (and What Usually Isn’t)

After the cost test and the voltage check, most of your house sorts itself into clear piles. The patterns below hold for the great majority of international moves.

Usually worth shipping:

High-value, compact items: jewelry, watches, and small valuables (keep the most precious of these with you, not in the container).
Genuine heirlooms and irreplaceable sentimental pieces.
Dual-voltage electronics and the cables, chargers, and accessories that go with them.
Quality furniture with real value or meaning, if it suits the space you’re moving into.
Specialized tools, hobby gear, or professional equipment that’s expensive or hard to find at your destination.
Important documents and records (carry the critical originals on your person).

Usually not worth shipping:

Large appliances tied to U.S. voltage, frequency, or hookups.
Single-voltage electronics and anything that runs hot, like hair dryers and curling irons, which tend to be single-voltage.
Bulky, low-value furniture that’s cheap to rebuy.
Everyday dishes, glassware, basic linens, and pantry staples.
Anything broken, worn out, or that you’ve been meaning to get rid of anyway.

Keep destination prices in the back of your mind as you sort. The same sofa might be “ship it” for someone moving to an expensive market and “sell it” for someone moving where furniture is cheap. And remember that some categories aren’t a choice at all: certain items are restricted or prohibited from international shipment regardless of how you feel about them, so check our guide on what you can’t ship internationally before you commit anything to the container.

When to Sell or Donate Before You Go (→ 175)

Everything that fails the keep test still has to leave your house somehow, and selling or donating it is usually better than paying to ship or dumping it. Anything in good, usable condition that’s too cheap or bulky to justify freight is a candidate: furniture you’re not attached to, working appliances, kitchenware, clothing you’ve outgrown, and the steady accumulation of stuff that fills a home.

Start early, because liquidating a household takes longer than people expect, and a fire-sale in the final week leaves money on the table. We cover the actual mechanics of selling, from yard sales to online listings, in our guide on selling your stuff before moving, so we’ll stay focused here on the international-move angle: sell or donate the things that lose the cost-to-rebuy test, and do it on a timeline that doesn’t collide with your departure.

Donating carries a tax wrinkle worth a neutral note. This is general information, not tax advice, and you should confirm current rules with the IRS or a tax professional. If you give household goods to a qualified charitable organization, the IRS generally lets you deduct their fair market value, but only if the items are in good used condition or better; things that are broken or unusable are treated as having no deductible value.

For any single donation worth $250 or more, the IRS requires a written acknowledgment from the charity, and noncash donations above certain totals require additional forms, such as Form 8283 for amounts over $500. Drop-off receipts rarely list individual items, so keep your own itemized list of what you gave, its condition, and a reasonable value. Whether the deduction is worth the effort depends on your own tax situation, and rules can change year to year, so verify the current requirements before you rely on them.

When to Store Things Back in the U.S. Instead (→ 129)

Sometimes the right answer is none of the above: not the ship pile, not the sell pile, but a holding pattern back home. Storing in the U.S. makes sense in a specific set of situations, even though it means paying to keep things you can’t use abroad.

The classic case is a temporary or uncertain move. If you’re going overseas for a defined assignment and plan to return, shipping a whole household over and back twice is costly and hard on your belongings; leaving the bulk in storage and traveling light can be the cleaner play. Storage also fits when an item has real value but doesn’t survive the voltage or compatibility check, like a U.S. appliance you’d want again on your return, or when you’re holding heirlooms and valuables you’re not ready to ship into an unfamiliar setting.

There’s a customs angle to keep in mind if you’re a U.S. resident who may bring goods back later. U.S. Customs and Border Protection generally allows returning residents to import used household and personal effects duty-free if you owned and used them in a household where you were a resident, subject to timing rules, so storing your things at home rather than shipping them abroad and back can keep that path open. The specifics depend on your circumstances and current CBP rules, so treat this as general information and confirm the details with CBP; our customs guide covers the returning-resident side in more depth.

What this post deliberately doesn’t cover is how to store: choosing a unit, picking a size, or packing it so things survive months in the dark. That’s its own subject, and we walk through it in our guide on when storage makes sense during a move. Here, storage is simply the third option on the decision tree, the place for things that are too valuable to sell but don’t belong in the container.

Work through your house this way, one meaningful item at a time, and the overwhelming pile of “everything I own” resolves into three manageable lists. You’ll ship less than you feared, recover some money on the way out, and arrive overseas with the things that genuinely earned the trip.

This article is general information, not tax, customs, or legal advice. Voltage standards, customs allowances, and tax rules vary by country and change over time; verify the current requirements for your destination and situation with the official sources below before you act.

Sources

Federal Maritime Commission, “Household Goods Shipment” (international moves priced by volume or weight; international ocean movers must be FMC-licensed). https://www.fmc.gov/complaints-and-assistance/international-move/
Federal Maritime Commission, “Moving Dos and Don’ts” (consumer guidance for overseas household-goods shipments). https://www.fmc.gov/about/bureaus-offices/consumer-affairs-dispute-resolution-services/moving-dos-and-donts/
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “Shopping Abroad: Duty Free, Gifts, Household Items” (returning-resident duty-free household and personal effects; one-year-of-use and timing rules). https://www.cbp.gov/travel/us-citizens/know-before-you-go/shopping-abroad-duty-free-gifts-household-items
Internal Revenue Service, “Publication 526, Charitable Contributions” (fair-market-value deduction; good-used-condition requirement; $250 written-acknowledgment rule). https://www.irs.gov/publications/p526
Internal Revenue Service, “Instructions for Form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contributions” (reporting noncash donations over $500). https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8283
Internal Revenue Service, “Publication 561, Determining the Value of Donated Property” (how to value donated household goods). https://www.irs.gov/publications/p561