Full packing
We pack everything, room by room, labelled by the room it is going to. You keep out what you need for the night before and nothing else.
Service 05
Packing, at the depth you want
Packing is the part of a move people most often underestimate and most often regret doing alone at midnight. It is also the part that can be split sensibly: hand over the hard rooms, keep the easy ones.
Four ways to do it
Part packing
We take the rooms that are genuinely difficult — the kitchen, the glass, the pictures, the books — and you do the clothes and the soft things.
Materials only
Cartons, paper, bubble, tape and wardrobe boxes delivered ahead, with a conversation about how to pack the awkward items.
Unpacking
Optional at the other end: boxes emptied, contents placed, cartons and paper taken away rather than left stacked in a hall.
What is genuinely worth handing over
The kitchen, every time. It holds more than any other room, almost all of it is breakable or heavy, and it is the room you need working first at the other end. After that: glass and china, pictures and mirrors, and books — which are simple to pack and brutal to carry if packed wrongly.
Wardrobes, bedding, towels and soft furnishings are easy and quick, and there is no good reason to pay somebody else to do them.
What we use, and why
- Double-walled cartons
- For books, tools and anything dense. A single-walled box full of books fails at the worst possible moment.
- Wardrobe cartons
- Clothes travel hanging and go straight back onto a rail, which saves an evening at the other end.
- Picture cartons
- Purpose-made, corner-protected, and never stacked flat under anything.
- Paper and bubble
- Layered rather than wrapped once. Glass and china break from movement inside a box, not from the box being dropped.
- Blanket wrap
- On furniture, applied in the room it stands in, because doorways are where the damage happens.
Labelling by destination, not origin
Boxes are marked with the room they are going to rather than the room they came from. It sounds trivial. It is the difference between a crew placing three hundred cartons correctly without asking and a crew asking about every one of them.
If you are packing yourself
Then what is inside the boxes is your responsibility, and that is not a technicality — a loosely filled or overfilled carton behaves differently on a staircase, and cover reflects who packed it. Ask us how to pack the awkward things; we would far rather explain it in advance than see the result afterwards.
Related
Packing sits inside a home move for most households, and it matters particularly where things are going into storage or abroad — sealed containers and customs inventories both demand a higher standard than a trip across town.
Questions
Packing, asked honestly
01 What is worth paying someone else to pack?
Kitchens, glass, pictures, books and anything with sentimental value. They take longer than people expect and they are where breakages actually happen. Wardrobes and soft furnishings are easy to do yourself.
02 Can we pack some of it and leave the rest?
Yes, and most households do exactly that. Say at survey which rooms are yours and which are ours so the materials and the crew time are right on the quotation.
03 What do you use?
Double-walled cartons for books and heavy items, wardrobe cartons so clothes travel hanging, layered paper and bubble for glass and china, purpose-made picture cartons, and blanket wrap on furniture. Labelled by room, and by which room they are going to rather than the one they came from.
04 If we pack ourselves, who is responsible?
You are, for what is inside the boxes you filled. It is not a technicality: a carton packed loosely or overfilled behaves differently on a staircase, and cover reflects that. We will tell you how to pack the awkward things if you ask.
Next step
Say which rooms you want to keep. We will quote for the rest.
Most households hand over the kitchen and the glass and do the rest themselves. It is usually the right split.