How to pack for a move

Start with what you don’t use

Of all the ways to approach packing for a move, the best is to plan it in order: from what you need least to what you need most. In the first week, pack the books, the decorations, out-of-season clothes and whatever is in the garage or storage. The kitchen and bathroom come last, and what you use every day only goes into a box the day before.

There’s a whole guide on that: what to pack first.

Tackle one room at a time

It’s the simplest way to organize your packing, and the one that keeps you from getting overwhelmed: finish one room before you start on the next. Packing efficiently isn’t packing fast — it’s never having to sort the same things twice. Inside each room, keep the same categories together: books with books, cables with cables, bathroom things with bathroom things. Mixing living room and bedroom things in the same box saves two minutes now and costs you an afternoon in the new house, carrying that box from room to room.

The exception is filler: towels, dish towels and bedding help protect fragile things, and then the box belongs to the room the fragile things are going to.

How to pack a moving box

There’s one method, and it works for every box. A short checklist to repeat:

1. Reinforce the bottom with tape, in a cross.
2. Heavy at the bottom, light on top. Books and dishes go in first, anything that dents goes on top.
3. Fill the gaps. Crumpled paper, dish towels, clothes. A box where things shift is a box where things break.
4. Fill it to the top, and no further. Half empty, it caves in when another box goes on top; overflowing, it won’t close and won’t stack.
5. Lift it to test it. If it’s hard to lift, it’s too heavy. Take things out or use a smaller box.

Small boxes are for heavy things — books, dishes, tools. Large boxes are for things that are light and take up space — pillows, comforters, clothes.

Packing supplies

You don’t need much: boxes in two or three sizes, wide packing tape, packing paper, some bubble wrap and a marker. The full list, with what’s worth buying and what you can reuse from home, is in the guide to moving supplies.

Label every box as you close it

Of all the packing hacks, it’s the one most people skip, and the one that saves the most time. When you close a box, you know exactly what you put in it; three days later you don’t, and in the new house you have forty identical brown boxes.

Every box should have, on more than one side:

• a number — it’s what tells it apart from the others;
• the room it’s going to in the new home, not the one it came from;
• “Fragile” and “This side up”, when they apply.

The number is what lets you keep a list of what’s in each box — in a notebook, on a sheet of paper, or in an app. Without a number, “Kitchen 3” and “Kitchen 4” are the same box.

Packing fragile items

There’s just one principle: fragile pieces mustn’t touch each other or move. Wrap each one separately, fill the box until there’s no room left to shift, and put nothing heavy on top.

Every kind of thing has its own tricks — plates go in on edge, glasses standing up, pictures with their corners protected. Each one is explained below.