Packing is the part of moving that everyone underestimates, usually by a factor of two. A three-bedroom home is 60 to 100 boxes, and filling them properly takes most of a week of evenings, not the single weekend people budget.
Packing yourself saves $300 to $800 against professional packers, and the saving is real if you do it well. Done badly, it costs the saving back in breakages, an insurance gap and a slow, expensive loading day. This guide is the doing-it-well version.
How many boxes, and which ones
Rough counts by home size: a one-bedroom unit needs 20 to 40 boxes, a two-bedroom home 40 to 60, and a three-bedroom home 60 to 100. Big households with garages, sheds and hobbies sit at the top of each range.
Box choice matters more than people think. The two workhorses are the book box (small, for anything dense: books, tins, tools, records) and the tea chest (large, for anything light and bulky: linen, toys, plastics, lampshades). The classic beginner mistake is filling tea chests with books; a full one is unliftable and the bottom gives way. Dense things in small boxes, light things in big ones, every time. Add a port-a-robe or two for hanging clothes, and buy proper packing tape, not household sticky tape.
Materials that matter, and one that does not
Butcher's paper or packing paper is the wrapping workhorse: cheap, clean and quick. Newspaper works but the ink transfers, so anything porous (lampshades, fabric, light-coloured ceramics) comes out grey and needs washing. Bubble wrap earns its cost on genuinely fragile items but is overkill for everyday crockery, which travels fine wrapped in paper and packed vertically like files, not stacked flat.
Second-hand boxes are fine if they are dry, strong and roughly uniform in size; uniform boxes stack into stable walls in the truck. Removalists sell boxes and often buy back or collect unused ones, and marketplace listings after someone else's move are the cheapest source of a matched set.
The order: start where you never go, finish in the kitchen
Pack in reverse order of daily use. Start weeks out with the spaces you can live without: storage cupboards, the garage, the shed, off-season clothes, books, decor and the good china. A carton or two a night from these zones and the mountain shrinks painlessly.
The kitchen goes last because you use it until the end, and it also takes the longest per cubic metre of any room in the house: everything in it is dense, breakable or oddly shaped. Leave two days for the kitchen alone. In the final week you should be living out of a deliberately small kit: a few plates, one pan, the kettle, and the essentials box described below.
A labelling system that survives the truck
The test of a labelling system is not moving day, it is day three in the new house when you need the phone chargers and the school uniforms. Make labels answer three questions: which room at the new house, what is inside, and how urgently it will be needed.
- Label the top and at least one side, because boxes get stacked and tops disappear
- Name rooms for the destination house, not the old one; "study" is useless if the new house has no study
- Number every box and keep a running list on your phone of number and contents; it doubles as your delivery checklist and your insurance inventory
- Mark fragile boxes on every face, and mark a handful of boxes OPEN FIRST for each room
- Colour-coded tape per room lets the crew sort boxes at a glance without reading anything
What removalists will not move
Every removalist carries a dangerous goods exclusion list, and finding out on the day means a scramble. The standard exclusions: gas bottles (including the barbecue bottle, even empty, unless purged and certified), petrol and fuels, paint and solvents, pool chemicals, garden chemicals, aerosols in quantity, ammunition and perishable food. Plants are restricted on interstate moves and many companies decline them locally too.
Plan the exits early: use up or give away opened chemicals, drain fuel from the mower and whipper snipper, swap the gas bottle rather than moving it, and run the pantry down in the final fortnight. Valuables, documents and medications are not excluded, but they should travel with you regardless.
Appliances and the 24-hour fridge rule
Defrost the fridge and freezer at least 24 hours before the move, with towels down to catch the melt, and leave the doors ajar so it travels dry and does not grow mould in transit. At the other end, let it stand for a few hours after positioning before switching it on so the compressor oil settles.
Washing machines need their drum secured; the transit bolts that came with the machine are ideal if you kept them, and removalists can usually brace a drum if you did not. Photograph the cable setup behind the TV before unplugging, tape remotes to the units they belong to, and keep every appliance's screws and fittings in a labelled zip-lock bag taped to the appliance itself.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to pack a 3-bedroom house?+
Around 40 to 60 boxes' worth of steady effort, which for most households means one to two weeks of evenings plus a final weekend, out of a total of 60 to 100 boxes including the easy bulky ones. Professional packers do the same house in a day because they work in pairs and do not stop to reminisce over the photo albums.
Are owner-packed boxes covered by insurance?+
Often not, or only partially. Transit insurance commonly excludes breakage inside boxes the owner packed, because the insurer cannot verify how well they were packed. Pack valuables and true fragiles to a high standard, or pay the packers for just those boxes so they fall under cover.
Where can I get cheap moving boxes?+
Removalists sell new ones and are often the best value once buy-back is counted. Second-hand sets from marketplace listings after someone else's move are cheaper still. Supermarket boxes are free but inconsistent in size and strength, which makes truck stacking slower; use them for the garage, not the glassware.
Should I empty drawers before the move?+
For local moves, sturdy drawers can often travel full of light soft items like clothes, if the removalist agrees. Empty anything heavy, fragile or spillable. For interstate moves, empty furniture entirely; it will be handled more times and may be stacked, and full drawers strain the joints of the furniture itself.