How to Pack for a House Move: A Room-by-Room Guide

Knowing how to pack for moving house comes down to one principle: work from the rooms and things you use least toward the ones you use every day, and give yourself three unhurried weeks rather than one frantic weekend. Do that and packing becomes an hour or two a day of steady progress. Leave it all to the last minute and it becomes the worst part of the move. This guide takes you room by room, in the order a professional would tackle them, with the box types, protection and labelling that keep everything liftable and intact.

If you are still working out how many cartons to buy, our guide to how many moving boxes you need gives typical counts by property size. This one is about the method once the boxes arrive.

Pack in the right order

The single habit that makes a move calm is packing least-used first. It lets you keep living normally in the house while the boxes quietly fill up around the edges.

• Three to four weeks out: the loft, garage, shed, spare room, books, ornaments, out-of-season clothes and anything decorative. None of it will be missed before the move.
• Two weeks out: most of the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen equipment you rarely use, the good crockery, spare pans, the appliances that live in a cupboard.
• The final week: everyday bedrooms, the bathroom and the bulk of the kitchen.
• The day before: everything except the essentials box, which is packed and loaded last.

As you finish each room, close it off mentally. A house where the loft, garage and spare room are already boxed feels under control even when the kitchen is still full.

The kitchen

The kitchen holds the most, the heaviest and the most breakable things in the house, so it takes the longest and is best done carefully rather than fast. Start with the back-of-cupboard items you will not need before the move and leave the kettle, a few mugs, a pan and some cutlery until the very end.

Wrap plates individually in packing paper and stand them on their edge in a reinforced carton, not stacked flat, because a plate on edge survives a knock that would crack a stacked one. Wrap glasses and mugs one at a time and fill them with a twist of paper. Keep breakables in small cartons, line the base and lid with soft material, and fill every gap so nothing shifts. Bag dry food and seal opened packets, and pour nothing, removers will not carry loose liquids. Tape drawers and lids, and coil kettle and appliance cables so they do not catch.

Bedrooms and wardrobes

Bedrooms pack quickly because so much is soft. Bedding, pillows and duvets go loose into large cartons or vacuum bags and double as padding elsewhere. Fold everyday clothes into standard boxes or leave them in the drawers if the chest is being moved, taping the drawers shut.

Hanging clothes are easiest in wardrobe cartons, tall boxes with a rail that let garments travel on their hangers and hang straight up in the new house. Most removers hire these and collect them afterwards, so you do not have to buy them. Keep jewellery, watches and small valuables with you rather than in a box on the van.

The living room

Books are the trap in here. They are dense, so they go in small cartons only, a large box of books is unliftable and will burst its base. Wrap framed pictures and mirrors and stand them in flat picture cartons, never laid flat under other boxes. Photograph the back of your television and audio kit before you unplug it so reconnecting is quick, coil each cable and bag it with the device it belongs to. Lampshades travel in large light boxes, ornaments wrapped individually in small ones.

The bathroom

Quick but leak-prone. Tape the lids of anything liquid, then bag toiletries in case a lid works loose in transit. Throw out half-empty bottles rather than paying to move them. Keep one set of essentials, toothbrushes, soap, a towel and any medication, back for the essentials box.

Loft, garage and shed

This is where estimates go wrong most often, so start early and be ruthless. A move is the best decluttering deadline you will ever get: charity shops and the local tip in Sussex are busiest at weekends, so plan a run or two. Tools travel better in their own boxes or crates than in cartons. Removers will not carry petrol, gas bottles, paint, aerosols, chemicals or fireworks, so drain the mower and dispose of anything hazardous in good time.

Protecting fragile items

Breakages nearly always come down to two mistakes: too much weight in a box, or gaps that let things move. Avoid both. Wrap each fragile item on its own, cushion the base and top of the carton, and pack heavy things low and light things on top. Fill voids with paper or soft items until nothing rattles when you gently shake the box. Keep fragile boxes light, mark them clearly on more than one face, and tell your remover which boxes need care so they are stacked at the top of a load rather than the bottom.

Labelling that actually helps

Label the side of every box as well as the lid, because boxes are stacked and the lids vanish from view. Write the destination room and a short note of the contents, not just "misc", so the box that holds the kettle can be found in seconds. Give each room a colour, using coloured tape or a marker, and put a matching mark by the door of each room in the new house so removers can place boxes without asking. If anything is going into storage, number the boxes and keep a short list.

The essentials box

Pack one box, or a suitcase, that comes off the van first and gets you through the first night without opening anything else. A workable list: kettle, mugs, tea, coffee and milk, toilet roll, hand soap, a towel each, phone and chargers, medication, basic tools and a torch, a change of clothes, and the paperwork for the move. Keep it with you in the car rather than loading it, so it cannot end up buried at the back of the van.

Do it yourself or pay for a pack

You do not have to choose all or nothing. Many Sussex movers pack their own books, clothes and lofts and pay a firm to pack the kitchen and fragile items, which are the slowest and riskiest. A full professional pack is faster and better protected, and it can matter for insurance, since some policies only cover damage to items the removal firm packed itself. If you are weighing it up, our guide to packing service costs in Sussex sets out what a pack involves and what it costs.

Fit it into the wider move

Packing is one strand of a house move, and it works best alongside a timeline for the admin, the utilities and the removal booking. Our moving house checklist lays out the whole countdown, and if you have not booked a firm yet, our removal costs in Sussex guide explains where materials and packing sit within a quote. You can also return to the Move Sussex homepage for local guides. For advice on choosing an insured firm, the British Association of Removers publishes guidance for consumers.

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