How To Properly Pack And Store Your Belongings When Moving Homes

2nd August 2022

Moving house always seems like an exciting experience, from the outside. However, when it comes to the stress of packing and storing your belongings and the overwhelming process of moving house, people quickly find it a lot more stressful and time-consuming than you might expect. You need to contact removalists, storage companies, utility companies, and that’s before you even start packing your belongings and moving house!

Don’t worry – help is at hand. Here at Quick Self Storage, we offer self storage units in Peterborough and storage facilities in Darlington. We have many years of experience in packing and storing our customer’s belongings. In this blog post, we share our tips and tricks on how you can properly pack and store your belongings when moving home.

Packing Supplies

Firstly, you’ll need packing supplies. While you’ve more than likely been raiding the local spotlight’s bins and collecting boxes for a few weeks, more than likely you still won’t have enough. You’ll quickly find that things take up more room than you expect, or those old boxes you’ve had in your garage for ten years have fallen apart during the move. You’ll also find that you need many more boxes than you thought you would need. 

You’ll need a lot of different packing supplies to ensure that you keep all your belongings safe and secure. Whether you are moving them into a storage facility in Peterborough or Darlington temporarily or moving them straight to your new home – you will still need a large amount of high-quality packing supplies.

Generally speaking, you’ll need a selection of the following packing materials. These include small, medium and large boxes. You’ll also need heavy-duty boxes, wardrobe boxes and telescopic cardboard boxes for things like mirrors or artwork for example. Packing materials like packing tape, bubble wrap, old newspapers, Styrofoam, plastic bags, packing paper and stretch wrap will help you keep your valuable belongings safe during your move, no move nasty surprises when you start unpacking. A thick marker and labels will come in handy for labelling boxes. This will save you time when you’re trying to work out where you put your Laptop charger and how to stack them too during the move, nobody wants to have their kitchen plates in a compromising position.

Packing For Moving House

When moving house, there are a lot of processes that are reliant on timing. You need to sell and have a new home ready to move into, the timing has to be perfect, or you need to be prepared for a stressful experience. Your old home must be empty and ready for the new owners to take over, however, the new home also needs to be ready for you to move into for that process to be seamless. This can cause a lot of additional stress and worry. Self Storage units in Peterborough and Darlington can help take this Stress away from you. They Provide you with a cheap Storage unit, where you can place your items until your next home is ready, so you don’t miss out on the perfect person to buy your home.

Begin Packing In Advance

Packing always takes longer than anyone expects it to take. This is because you are packing up all your belongings. There will be things you come across that you have forgotten and or things that bring back memories. It’s also likely that you will have more than you realised too. We all collect things over the years and don’t realise how much we have until it’s time to pack and move home. As a general rule of thumb, if you live in a two-bed family home, you should give yourself a target of packing one box a day, if you follow this rule, it will take around 2 months to pack up your home. For smaller homes or flats, one month should be plenty of time. This is not an exact number, but it gives you a rough idea and will save you stress and heartache in the long run.

Pack Less Used Rooms First

Think about the rooms that are used the least in your home. These are the rooms that you need to start packing first. These will include spaces like guest rooms, the loft, the garage and the shed for example. By packing these areas first, your life and home will not become too distracted by the move. It will also help you feel like you are getting somewhere with the move, without feeling like the whole home is upside down or in boxes.

Declutter And Donate As You Go Along

As you are packing your belongings, you will come across things you no longer want or need anymore. This could be family hand-me-downs, things you are keeping ‘just in case’ and things that aren’t used anymore. Think about your friends and family and if these are things they might like. Then consider a car boot sale or selling things on eBay. The costs of moving house can add up quickly. Selling things as you go along can help raise some money for the move. You may have some things that you can donate to charity, or there may be damaged or unused items that just need to be thrown away. You need to be strong and not just keep everything.

Create A Detailed List

If you have lots of boxes full of different books, work documents or smaller belongings, then a detailed list will become your best friend. Instead of just labelling the box ‘books’ or ‘trinkets’ you can have a detailed list. This will tell you exactly what is in each box. If your items are going into storage in Peterborough or Darlington, this is ideal. It will help you know what is in each box if you just need one item out of the box, for example.

Pack One Room At A Time

Pacing up your home to move house is full of distractions. You can often feel the pressure of the move and it’s hard to stay focused. By packing up one room at a time you can force yourself to stay focused. It will make storing, stacking and moving easier too as all the items of one room will be together. They can be stacked and stored together, then moved into the new house together. This tip will help reduce missing boxes and boxes going into the wrong room in the new house. Having one room completely packed will also help you feel a sense of achievement like you are getting somewhere in the mammoth task of moving home.

Don’t Overpack Boxes

While it may be tempting to squeeze just one more item in a box, we don’t recommend it. Overpacking boxes can lead to boxes becoming too heavy. This could result in the boxes breaking or injurying you or someone else when the boxes are being moved. By overpacking the boxes, you could also cause damage to the items in the box as they are tightly squashed together. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend you pack lighter items in larger boxes. Then, smaller boxes can have the heavier items like vases, pots or books for example.

Store Valuables Together

It’s a good idea to store all your valuables, personal and confidential items together and safely. This includes things like bank cards, insurance details, passports and more. If you have expensive jewellery, car keys or family heirlooms, for example, these should be stored in the same place as your other valuables. While it is important to label the boxes, try not to make the box labelling too attractive to potential thieves. There will be times when boxes are left outside your home, the storage facility in Peterborough or the next home as you move house.  

Fill Empty Spaces

Keep some of the storage materials and your clothes, towels or bedding to one side where possible. These items can be used to fill empty spaces in your box. This will avoid the risk of things moving in the box when being carried or in transport. In turn, this will avoid the risk of the items in the box being damaged. Stuffing items into these empty spaces will also make the boxes sturdier, therefore making them easier to stack in the removals van or your storage unit in Peterborough.

Stack Carefully

You will have larger boxes and smaller boxes. These will all contain different things and be different weights. It’s a good idea to stack the heavier and flatter items at the bottom. This will give you a secure base to stack items on top of. By placing lighter boxes on top of heavier items you will make better use of your storage space and It will reduce the risk of smaller and more fragile items being broken too.

An Essentials Box

Whether you are moving straight to your new home or need to place items into storage in Darlington or Peterborough for a day or two, you will need an essentials box. These are all the items you will need that day. Therefore, if the move gets delayed or is taking longer than expected, you’ll have certain items all in one place. Your essentials box should include bed clothes, clothes for the next day, shower items, toothbrush and paste, hairbrush and your bank card or money. It’s a good idea to have a kettle, tea bags, mug and sugar too, as well as phone chargers and any items similar. Think about the last things you pack when you go on holiday, or the things you use every bedtime and morning. These items need to go in your essentials box.

If you need packing materials or want to know how we can meet your storage needs while moving house, call our team now. We have storage units in Peterborough and Darlington that can store your belongings for as long or as short of a time as you need.