Packing materials: what to buy, and what to avoid

Start with the quantities

Before buying anything, put your rooms into the packing calculator. It gives you a box count and a materials list in about thirty seconds, and it will almost certainly tell you that your kitchen needs more than you had planned for. Everybody underestimates the kitchen.

This page is for people packing themselves. With a full house removal you get some free boxes, the quantity worked out when we quote, plus some tape, and you can buy more if you want a bigger buffer. Everything below that is yours to buy, which is why we would rather tell you honestly what is worth having than sell you a bundle you do not need. If you book our packing service none of this applies: we arrive with everything the job needs and take the spares away.

Packing paper

Plain newsprint, sold on the roll or in a ream. It is the same paper a newspaper is printed on, without the ink, which is the whole point: newspaper ink transfers onto china, glass and anything pale, and you will find it again when you unpack.

Tissue paper is the common mistake. It looks like the right thing and offers essentially no protection, because it has no bulk to it. You want paper you can crumple into a fist-sized ball, because most of the protection in a box comes from the crumpled paper filling the gaps rather than from the wrap itself.

Reckon on about 10kg for an average kitchen and another 5kg if you have a dining room with glassware and china in it.

Bubble wrap

For anything with a corner that can chip or a face that can scratch: picture glass, mirrors, screens, lamp bases, ceramics. Small bubble is right for most household items. Large bubble is for bulky things and is mostly air, so it fills a box quickly without adding much protection per metre.

You need less than you think if you are using packing paper properly. Paper does the volume, bubble wrap does the specific fragile items.

Marker pens

Label the side of the box, never the top. Once boxes are stacked three high in a room you cannot see a single top, and the crew will be asking you which room each one goes in.

Write the room first and the contents second, because the room is what matters on the day. Two pens minimum, because one always vanishes.

Mattress covers

A few pounds each and worth every penny. A mattress goes through two doorways, down a staircase, across a pavement and into a van, and it picks up whatever it touches. One per bed.

Get the right size. An undersized cover splits at the first corner.

Sofa and furniture covers

Our crews blanket-wrap furniture as standard, so this is for the gap between your front door and the van on a wet day, and for anything going into storage where you want it covered for months rather than hours.

If your move is in winter, buy them. It will rain.

Things we would not bother with

Foam peanuts. They migrate to the bottom of the box under vibration and leave whatever they were supporting sitting on the cardboard. They also go everywhere when you unpack, and stay in your carpet for months.

Specialist dish and glass kits. Cell dividers cost several times what paper does and are no better than a properly packed box with plates stood on their edge rather than stacked flat. Plates survive on edge because the force goes through the strongest axis.

Vacuum bags for anything but soft furnishings. Good for duvets and coats. Not good for clothes you want to wear soon, because they come out creased enough to need washing again.

Coloured tape for room coding. It sounds neat and it is far less useful than a marker pen on the side of the box, since a colour tells the crew nothing about which room it came from.