Shipping Your Belongings from the UK to Oman
Moving abroad always comes with a mix of excitement and logistics — and shipping your entire life across continents is one of the biggest challenges. When my family relocated from the UK to Muscat, Oman in August 2025, we found ourselves deep in packing lists, customs paperwork, and container tracking apps.
Here’s what the process really looked like for us — and what I wish I’d known before the boxes left our driveway in June.
Preparing to Move: Deciding What to Ship
Because my husband’s job brought us to Oman, a lot of the relocation details were thankfully organised through his employer. That said, we still had big decisions to make about what to bring.
Our new home in Muscat was fully furnished, which made things simpler, so we decided to ship just one 20-foot container of our personal belongings. That meant prioritising items with sentimental or practical value: books, kitchen essentials, favourite decor pieces, and toys. The hardest part was balancing what makes a house feel like home against what’s worth the cost and effort to move.
Tip: If you’re moving into furnished accommodation, think about what will make it feel like yours, often it’s the small things: photos, your favourite mug, or a few home comforts. We always take our pictures and try and hang them asap
Our living room slowly turned into a maze of boxes as moving day approached.
Packing Up Madness
By the end of June, our house looked more like a cardboard maze than a home. The moving company arrived armed with rolls of tape, bubble wrap, and detailed inventory sheets. Each box was labelled and sealed for its long journey. Obviously as soon as it all left my driveway I realised that it might have been fun to put an AirTag into one of the boxes so we could track where our mugs and glasses were on their journey.
We used The Eurogroup International Movers, and the experience was professional and reassuring from start to finish. Their team handled packing and documentation, which took a lot of the stress away.
Pro tip: Photograph every room and each box before it’s sealed. You’ll thank yourself later when customs paperwork blurs together.
Our belongings carefully packed, labelled, and ready to be loaded.
The Paperwork: Lists, Lists, and More Lists
Every single item — from kitchen utensils to kids’ toys — had to be listed on a Household Goods Descriptive Inventory form. These documents are essential for customs clearance on arrival in Oman. You’ll need similar paperwork regardless of who ships your items, and it’s worth double-checking:
You have an itemised list with approximate values.
You’ve kept a copy of your signed inventory forms — they’ll be checked when the shipment arrives.
Every single item gets recorded on detailed shipping forms — it’s a paperwork marathon.
Saying Goodbye to the Container
On 26th June, our container arrived on a huge red truck. It’s a surreal feeling, watching your entire household get loaded into a metal box bound for a different continent. Once sealed, that container becomes its own little world of memories. The moving company provided tracking updates, and we were told to expect delivery around late August. Sea freight isn’t quick, our shipment took about eight weeks port-to-port.
Watching our container arrive. Woohoo!
Arrival in Oman: A Hot, Happy Reunion
Our container finally reached Muscat on 25th August, perfectly timed with our first month of settling in. Customs clearance took a few days, and then everything was delivered to our door. We were all so excited to see our stuff again, I was chuffed to bits to get more towels and bedding as we’d been surviving on a towel per person and doing A LOT of washing! Most things survived the journey perfectly, although it had clearly been a very hot journey as the soles had melted completely off a pair of boots. We’re used to moving about and I can mostly have a house turned around and unpacked in 48 hours, particularly when no furniture assembly is required.
Lessons Learned from Shipping to Oman
If you’re planning a similar move, here are a few things we learned along the way:
Start early. International shipping can take 10–12 weeks from booking to delivery.
Declutter before you pack. It’s cheaper and easier to replace low-value items locally than pay to ship them.
Keep a copy of everything. Inventory lists, insurance papers, and customs forms will save headaches later.
Use professional packers. The paperwork and packing standards are strict for sea freight.
Label sentimental items separately. When you unpack, you’ll want check those first.
Shipping your belongings overseas is as much an emotional process as it is a logistical one. Watching that container drive away down the street was both nerve-wracking and oddly freeing a visual marker of a new chapter beginning.
If you’re planning to move from the UK to Oman, know that while the paperwork, packing, and waiting can feel endless, it is so exciting when your familiar things arrive, and your new life starts to feel like home.
