Moving without chaos: packing order, labeling, and fragile items
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by Verpakkingdeals.nl
6 min reading time
A move rarely gets stuck on the heavy lifting, but on the boxes. This is how you determine the packing order, label smartly, and ensure your crockery arrives safely.
Most moves don't get stuck on the heavy lifting, but on the boxes. You start enthusiastically at the bookshelf, fill three boxes to the brim, and can't lift them the next day. Or you're in your new house with fourteen identical boxes and you don't know which one contains the coffee maker. If you plan a sequence a week in advance and label consistently, you'll be finished a few hours faster on moving day.
Start counting, not packing
Before you put anything in a box, walk through your house once with a notepad. For each room, estimate how many boxes you'll need. A rough rule of thumb that works pretty well in practice: a full meter-long bookshelf is about one box, a wardrobe with hanging clothes two to three, a kitchen cabinet one. Add ten percent, because something always comes up.
It's better to buy your boxes all at once rather than in three trips. The Action Moving Box of 480 x 430 x 330 mm (50 liters) costs € 3.50 and is the standard size for packing most of your house. For heavy items, you want something smaller: books, tools, and canned goods are better in a cardboard box of 15 x 15 x 15 cm for € 1.99. A small box you can still lift is worth more than a large box that stays put.
What not to put in a box
Keep clothes on hangers and bundle them in tens with a piece of tape around the hooks. Duvets and pillows are light and bulky: they're perfect for filling the last space in the car. Documents, jewelry, chargers, and medicines go in a bag you keep with you — never in a box that ends up among the rest.
The order: from attic to kitchen
Pack from least used to most used. In practice, this means: attic and storage first, then books, decorations, and guest room, then closets and wardrobe, and only at the very end the kitchen, bathroom, and items you touch every day.
Four weeks before the move: attic, basement, seasonal items, books, and everything you don't use anyway.
Two weeks: wall decorations, dishes you don't use daily, linens, off-season clothes.
One week: the rest of the cabinets, electronics you can do without, shoes.
Last two days: kitchen, bathroom, bed. Keep one box separate with what you need on the first night.
That last box is the most important of the entire move. It contains cleaning supplies, toilet paper, a roll of paper towels, scissors or a utility knife, phone chargers, a few plates and cutlery, coffee, and soap. Put it in the car last and in the new house first.
Fragile goods: upright, packed, and not loose
Dishes rarely break from an external blow, but from movement inside the box. Three principles help most against this.
Firstly: place plates upright on their edge, not stacked. A plate on its side carries its own weight; a stack of ten will crush the bottom plate. Secondly: each item gets a layer around it. For glasses, vases, and lampshades, bubble wrap on a roll of 500 mm x 500 m (€ 12.95) works fastest because you can keep working without cutting; for a smaller move, a roll of bubble wrap of 50 x 500 cm for € 5.00 will suffice. Thirdly: fill the gaps. A box that you can shake is not ready.
Cups and saucers, oil bottles, and anything that can leak should be placed separately and upright, with the cap extra tightened. Never place heavy boxes on top of boxes with glass, not even 'just for a moment'.
Labeling so you can find it in the new house
One word on the top is not enough, because in a stack you don't see the top. Write on two sides and the top. Use a consistent format: room, short contents, and a line or dot if the box is fragile.
Working with color saves even more time. Assign a color to each room and use permanent markers in 3 colors (5 pieces) for € 4.95, or a set of 5 permanent markers for € 4.00. Whoever helps with the heavy lifting then doesn't have to read, just look. Put the color codes with tape on the doorframe of each room in the new house and you'll hardly have to explain anything.
On the box
Example
Room
Kitchen
Contents in three words
Pans, oven dishes, measuring cup
Marking
Line = fragile, keep upright
Priority
1 = unpack immediately, 2 = can wait
Tape, utility knives, and the tools you forget
You'll use more tape than you think: count on about one roll per ten to fifteen boxes, as you tape both the bottom and the top. A single packing tape of 50 meters x 48 mm costs € 3.00; if more people are packing, then tape rolls of 6 pieces (€ 21.00) are more convenient, as no one has to wait. A tape dispenser with 2 rolls for € 9.95 saves you the fiddling with a loose roll you can no longer find.
Also have utility knives ready — and more than one, because they disappear. Utility knives in packs of 3 cost € 1.95, and a set of 8 utility knives costs € 4.95. Always cut shallowly and along the tape, not straight through the cardboard: inside the box below is often exactly what you don't want to hit.
One more small thing for the new house: self-adhesive hooks of 6 x 6 cm (10 pieces) for € 5.95. Handy for having a place to put your coats, dishtowels, and keys on day one without having to dig out the drill.
Unpack in the same order, but reversed
Start with the boxes you gave priority 1: kitchen, bathroom, bed. Place the rest by room and leave them there. A box that is still closed after three weeks tells you something about its contents — that's the cheapest decluttering opportunity you'll get. Store your moving boxes folded flat if you want to use them for storage; cardboard that has been damp loses its strength and is better off in the paper recycling.
Order everything in a row
If you want to be done in one go: check out the moving boxes for the heavy lifting, packaging and shipping for boxes and void fill material, tape for rolls and dispensers, and scissors and knives for cutting tools. Unsure about quantities or sizes for your situation? Feel free to email info@verpakkingdeals.nl — we'll help you calculate so you don't run out of boxes halfway through.
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