Moving boxes and packing materials: the honest shopping list

How many moving boxes do you need?

The question everyone asks first, so here is the working answer before anything else. You can also get a box count from our calculator in about a minute, tailored to your property size and what you are moving.

The ranges are wide because people are wide: eighteen years in one house grows more cupboard archaeology than three years in a rental. Two adjustments matter. Add a third if you have lofts, garages or a shed in play. Subtract a third if you declutter properly first, which the moving house checklist schedules for week one precisely because it shrinks this table.

The materials list that earns its place

• Double-walled boxes, two sizes. The whole system rests on one rule, and the HomeOwners Alliance packing guide states it perfectly: "Don't pack heavy items into big boxes as you'll end up with something you cannot lift." Small boxes for books, tins and tools; large for bedding, toys and lampshades.
• A tape gun and proper packing tape. Two rolls more than you think. Taped seams, double-taped bottoms on the heavy ones.
• Packing paper, one large bundle. For plates, glasses and anything with a glaze. Plain paper, not newsprint, which marks china.
• Bubble wrap, one roll only. For electronics, mirrors and the genuinely fragile. Your towels and bedding do the rest for free.
• Marker pens, several. The British Association of Removers' moving guide reduces labelling to one instruction: "Label everything clearly. Mark boxes with the room they belong in and a short description of contents." A pen per packer makes that actually happen.
• Heavy-duty rubble sacks. Soft things, garden bits, the last-morning sweep. Cheaper than boxes and they squash into van gaps.
• A few wardrobe boxes if you are box-buying anyway. Hanging clothes travel creaseless and unpack in seconds. Three or four covers most households.

Free boxes vs bought boxes: where each wins

Free boxes are fine when they are the right boxes. Supermarkets, neighbours who have just moved, and local selling groups all shed decent cardboard, and for books, garage contents and the loft it works. The tests: dry, square, double-walled, no smell. A box that fails any of those is volunteering to fail again with your things inside it.

Buy new for the kitchen and anything fragile. Box strength is the actual product; a used single-wall box that has done two moves has spent its strength. Mixing the two is the sensible budget: bought boxes where breakage is possible, free boxes where it is not. What you should not do is pack glass in whatever was lying around; the wrapping technique in our packing guide only works inside a box that holds its shape under stack weight.

What you can skip (the honest bit)

• Branded "moving kits". Usually a markup wrapped around the same boxes plus accessories you will not finish. Buy components instead.
• Foam peanuts. Static-clingy mess that does nothing scrunched paper does not do better.
• Mattress bags, maybe. If a crew with transit blankets is moving you, the blankets do the job. Moving yourself in a hired van with no blankets? Then yes, buy the bag.
• Industrial shrink wrap. Useful in trained hands, a frustration in a hallway. We carry it on the van; you do not need a roll in the kitchen.
• Special divider boxes for every glass. Nice, not necessary. Paper-stuffed, individually wrapped glasses in a small double-walled box survive precisely as well, as the jobs below kept proving.

What we bring when you book the packing

Book the packing service and the materials question disappears: boxes, paper, tape, wardrobe boxes, transit blankets and the wrap all arrive on the van, and the cost sits as a line on the written quote rather than a dozen receipts. Furniture is wrapped rather than boxed, which is most of what protects a house in transit anyway.

The middle route is popular too: you pack the easy rooms with your own materials, we do the kitchen, the glass and the wardrobes. Say so on the quote form and the quote splits accordingly. Either way, used boxes you bought from us do not have to haunt your garage; flatten them and we will collect when nearby.