The Best Packing Guide Before Your Move

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When there is a move, there is packing. Maybe the part that takes the most of your time that you will spend on the move in total. A huge percent of people who are moving are choosing to take care of the packing of their personal belongings. The other, small portion, hires LA packers and movers to do everything instead.

If you are not a packing professional, you will learn some ultimate packing guidelines that If followed, will make your life easier and your move less stressful.

On the other hand, If you want to hire a company to pack you up, some things need, to be sorted out and checked.

Let’s focus then, list the rules and guidelines.

Declutter!

Well, the first thing to do is to separate and declutter the items. In every home there are things from other rooms that don’t belong in the living room for example or clean clothes in the laundry that aren’t out back to the original place.

In order to have a better idea of the number of things that you have, the amount and kinds of packing materials that you will need to purchase, let’s focus on decluttering.

Step 1: Organize

Dedicated bins

Go throughout each room with a basket or a bin and start collecting the things that aren’t meant to be there.

Grab another bin for the items that are for trash or recycling. Get rid of the necessary things that you’ve been hoarding but haven’t been using. It will create even larger chaos when you move into your new place and start buying new things to make your new place comfortable.

One more bin will be for the things that aren’t of use to you but will be of use to someone else. This bin will be dedicated to selling or donating.

Put everything where it belongs

This applies to those things that you’ve put into the first bin- items that were left somewhere where they don’t belong like teacups in the living room, clothes on the chair, etc.

Pack them up and sort them out to their original locations.

Kitchen utilities

Wash all the dishes, plates, pots, glassware and organize them nicely. Take count of the small kitchen appliances that you will be taking with you. Put everything into the ordinal location but in plain sight. You don’t want to forget about something that is essential.

Step 2: Do the walkthrough

After you did all of that, try to do a walk-through of the whole place, and don’t forget about the garage and lockers, closets.

Check If everything is where it’s supposed to be.

If It is, then start taking care of the other bins that you filled out:

recycle/trash bin
sell/donate bin.

It is simple, take the trash out. Don’t hold onto the things that you don’t need and don’t use. Just ask yourself simple questions:

Do I have a purpose for this?
Am I going to use this?
Do I have a place for this in my new home?
Can this be repaired?

If the answer to any of these questions is “NO”, then you should trash it or recycle it.

For those things that you decided to sell- organize a garage sale, list the items on the online platforms, and get rid of them before your moving date comes. Furniture movers that you choose will count on the exact size of the move, and If you don’t get rid of these things before, there can be confusion, lack of space on the truck, second trip to the origin location, more hours, more money spent, etc.

The same applies to “donation bins”. Reach out to someone that you had in mind. If you don’t know anyone personally, then consider:

Salvation Army
Goodwill etc.

Buy packing materials

After you decluttered, sorted everything out, recycled, got rid of the necessary things, donated or sold the excess items, it’s time to think about packing materials. Now it will be easier to estimate the number of boxes and materials when everything’s in order and in its place.

How to estimate the number of boxes?

It is not an easy thing to do. There is no exact recipe to success and the exact number of boxes that you will need. There can be only an estimate and an approximate number as a guideline for your shopping trip.

So let’s talk about the nature of the items and then about the purpose of the room where they’re held, and of course, the number of people that are moving.

The most difficult ones for estimation will be listed down below with some advice for each.

1. Clothes

Take a look at every closet and storage space where you are keeping the clothes. For these items, the best boxes are medium or large. For clothes that are folded, you can simply throw them into the regular boxes.

Count your hanging clothes. For these, you can use wardrobe boxes- buy them or rent them from a local moving company in Long Beach that you’re hiring. One regular wardrobe box fits between twenty and twenty-five hanging items(for winter jackets and more massive clothes on hangers go with the lower estimate)

Wardrobe boxes are convenient because there is plenty of empty space at the bottom. On the top, there is a bar where the clothes will be hung, but at the bottom, there’s only an empty space. Here you can throw extra pillows, blankets, linen, or even shoes and small shoe boxes.

2. Kitchen

The kitchen is where you will have to be cautious and patient. There are a lot of fragile items and you can’t stack them on top of each other while packing. That will result in many damages.

How movers advise usually- one medium box for every kitchen cabinet. You don’t have to follow this rule blindly, some cabinets might be half empty, some full to the top and here we can’t follow any rules. We can just go with the feeling.

For every kitchen appliance that you will be taking with you- count one medium/small box, depending on the size of the item.

What is specific here is the fact that there are various types of boxes for packing the kitchen. When you go shopping, purchase some dish packs, boxes for bottles, and glassware. These dedicated boxes have separations within that are preventing the damages of the items.

For kitchen items, you might want to consider buying packing paper, bubble wrap, and some additional means of protection to wrap them in before you put them into the boxes.

3. Books and decor

These are the items that you will find everywhere in your home, and it will be nice If you pack them like this, labeled and divided. If you do it, when you start unpacking at your new place, you will know exactly where to look for decor, where to find the books, where toiletries, etc.

For these, you can use book boxes and small boxes. Collect all the books that you have in your home in one pile and start packing them into the book boxes or small boxes. You can put a label on each box about where they belonged before, for example, “books, bedroom 1”, “books, living room shelf” etc.

With decor, you have to be careful because a lot of it is made out of fragile materials. Using only boxes won’t be enough to protect them. Advice is to use some packing paper, bubble wrap, or something similar.

4. Number of people that are moving

The best estimate to follow is the one based on the number of people that are moving. This number will include and cover all the rooms- bedrooms, kitchen, dining and living room, etc.

The usual estimate is that one adult that is moving is carrying around 20-25 boxes of various sizes. Do the math and come up with a number based on this variable.

If you want to go the other way and do it by items and rooms- calculate how many boxes you will have in this case and compare the number that you got with the box number that you get when you multiply the number of people that are moving with the estimate of 20-25 boxes per adult.

If we are talking about kids, this number is lower, it is up to 15.

The advice is to, whichever way you prefer to do it, purchase a few boxes more, just in case. These numbers and guidelines are not rules, they are estimates based on the experience of people that moved.

Types of packing materials

A lot of the materials are in the text above, but let’s list them all in one place. It can be a way to make the shopping checklist after you come up with the number of boxes.

Boxes: small, medium, large, wardrobe boxes, dish pack boxes, book boxes
Packing paper
Plastic wrap
Bubble wrap
Moving blankets
Labels

The only material that wasn’t mentioned is moving blankets. Your LA packers and movers will bring them, almost every company includes them in their price. But, you might want to purchase or rent some blankets in case that you need additional protection for fragile items while packing If you are doing the packing part on your own.

The other reason is If you are moving into the storage unit. Residential movers in Long Beach don’t give them away for free, so If your delivery is the storage, the company will remove and take their moving blankets with them.

Be prepared and informed- it’s a halfway to success and stress-free move!

Labels

Labels are a must-have! Label for everything! Label for fragile items, for rooms, for directions, for content.

If you use labels, your professional movers will know exactly where to unload every single box from the truck.

If It’s you who decided to pack on your own- congratulations! Your training was successful (if you followed the guidelines).

Hiring LA packers and movers

If you decide that you want the full service, then packing is not a thing to worry about.

However, you can’t wait for your movers in chaos. The advice in these situations is to, at least, declutter before the company arrives to start with the packing.

You will clear the way for them. It will be easier and organized and done faster than the other way- if you left your place in utter pre-move chaos.

Since you are not the one that is taking care of the packing, you would want to be there for the labeling part if you want to make the unpack part easy on you. Let your residential movers know which box goes where by helping them with the labeling.

Now you are all set!

It is time to start calling and reaching out to the companies, get quotes and find your perfect match. If you are handling the packing on your own, ask your movers for advice If you are having doubts, ask about insurance policies, etc.

If you are hiring movers for the full service- make sure that you are in good hands as all of our clients are!

We wish you a smooth move!