How to pack a house, room by room

Set yourself up before you tape a single box

Pick one room as the staging room, ideally one you can live without. Packed boxes go there and only there, so the rest of the house stays walkable and nothing gets packed twice.

Moovers does not supply packing materials beyond the free Starter Kit that comes with an in-person quote, so buy your supplies before you start. Running out of tape halfway through a kitchen kills an afternoon.

• Small boxes for anything heavy, large boxes for anything light. Reverse that and box bottoms fail.
• Packing paper or unprinted newsprint rather than newspaper, which transfers ink onto dishes and white ceramics.
• A real marker, not a ballpoint. Labels have to be readable across a room.
• A notebook or a note on your phone: box number, room, rough contents. It takes seconds per box and answers every question you will have next week.
• Set a weight rule and hold to it. If you would not carry it up a flight of stairs, repack it.

The kitchen

The kitchen produces more boxes than any other room and takes the longest, so start it earlier than feels necessary. Begin with what you never touch: the fondue set, the vase cabinet, the second set of dishes.

• Plates travel on their edges, never flat, with paper between each one and paper filling the space above them.
• Glasses and stemware go in divided boxes if you can get them, individually wrapped and standing upright either way.
• Heavy things go in small boxes. A large box of cast iron is a broken box.
• Knives get wrapped blade-first in a towel, taped shut and labelled as knives on the outside.
• Pour off or seal anything liquid, then bag it separately from anything absorbent.
• Defrost and dry the fridge and freezer at least a day ahead, and prop the door once it is empty.
• Keep one last-morning bin out: coffee maker, two mugs, a pan, a knife, dish soap, a roll of paper towels. It rides in your car, not the truck.

Bedrooms and closets

• Hanging clothes come down in bundles of eight or ten, still on their hangers, folded into a large bag or wardrobe box. Rehanging a closet at the new place then takes minutes.
• Folded clothes can stay in dresser drawers if the dresser is sturdy and the drawers are light. Tell the crew, since a loaded dresser is carried differently.
• Bedding, towels and coats are free padding. Use them around lamps, mirrors and anything with a corner.
• Jewellery, documents, cash, medication, passports, keys and hard drives go in one bag that stays with you all day and never touches the truck.
• Shoes go in their own boxes, not on top of clothes.
• Strip beds the night before and bag each set of bedding by bed, labelled. The first night in a new house is not the time to be searching for a fitted sheet.

The living room and electronics

• Photograph the back of the TV and the media cabinet before you unplug anything. It is the fastest instruction manual you will ever have.
• Coil each cable, band it, and put it in a bag labelled for the device it belongs to.
• Screws, bolts and brackets from anything you disassemble go in a zip bag taped to the underside of that item, not into a communal parts box.
• Televisions travel upright, never flat, ideally in the original carton if you kept it.
• Lamps come apart: shade off, bulb out, harp off, each packed separately. Shades crush and never come back.
• Books go in small boxes, spine down or flat, and no box gets more than you can lift comfortably.
• Framed art and mirrors need edge and corner protection and travel on edge. Tape does not belong on the face of a picture or on a finished frame.

Bathrooms, garage, basement and attic

These are the rooms that turn a one-day move into a long day, because nobody counts them when they estimate their own volume. Open every one of them a month out and be honest about what is actually leaving with you.

• Anything liquid gets its cap taped, then goes in a sealed bag, then into a box with other liquids.
• Prescriptions, first-aid supplies and anything you need daily go in the bag that stays with you.
• Hand tools go in a toolbox, power tools in their cases, and cords come off the tools.
• Rakes, shovels and long-handled yard tools get bundled and taped together, blades in.
• Propane, gasoline, kerosene, paint, thinners, aerosols and most cleaning chemicals cannot ride on the truck. Deal with them before move week at a town hazardous-waste drop-off.
• Whatever you decide is not coming should leave the house before move day, whether that means a donation run, a junk removal pickup or a dumpster.

Labels that earn their keep

The point of a label is not to describe the box. It is to tell someone carrying it, quickly and from a distance, which door to walk through.

• Write on two sides and the top, never only on the top. Boxes get stacked.
• Room first, in large letters, and use the room name at the new place rather than the old one.
• Add a priority: OPEN FIRST, WEEK ONE, or NO RUSH. It decides what gets loaded last and unloaded first.
• Number every box and keep the list. Box 34 is easier to find than the box with the good saucepan.
• Mark fragile on the sides, not just the top, and say what is in it. Fragile means nothing on its own.
• Coloured tape by room is faster than reading in a hallway with your hands full.