Extra hands, separate day
Packers, who are not the movers
Packing is a separate trade done by separate people, and it happens before the moving crew arrives rather than alongside them. Treating it as something the movers do while they are there is the commonest way a carefully planned move falls apart.
Kitchens and studies take the longest and get left to last. Start them first and the rest of the house follows easily.
What a packing visit involves
Full pack, part pack, fragile only
A full pack means everything, including the things people forget they own. A part pack usually means the kitchen and the study — the two rooms that consume the most time and produce the most breakages when rushed. Fragile-only means glass, ceramics, framed work and anything with a story attached.
Most households want a part pack and describe it as a full one. We ask which rooms specifically, because the answer changes how many packers turn up.
Why it is a separate visit
A packed house loads quickly and an unpacked one does not load at all. If the packing is still happening when the moving crew arrives, the crew waits, the vehicle waits, and the day loses its shape entirely.
So packers come first, finish, and leave a house ready to be carried out of. It is a dull piece of sequencing and it is the single most effective thing you can do for a large move.
What we ask you to do yourself
Personal documents, jewellery, medication, keys and anything irreplaceable travel with you rather than on the vehicle. Not because we expect a problem — because those items being in a box on a lorry is an unnecessary risk that costs nothing to avoid.
Also: tell us what is genuinely valuable before it is packed rather than after. Declared items are handled differently and insured differently, and that conversation cannot happen retrospectively.
- Passports, deeds, certificates and anything you would struggle to replace.
- Jewellery, watches and small high-value items.
- Medication, chargers, and the things you will want the first evening.
- Keys for every lock in both properties.
- Anything a carrier or ferry operator prohibits, if the load is crossing a border.
Unpacking
Available, and taken up far less often than it is offered. Where it is booked it is again separate people on a separate visit, working room by room and taking the empty materials away with them.
Most households prefer to unpack themselves and simply want the boxes gone afterwards, which we will do as a return visit.
A crew with packers
Questions about a crew with packers
- 1Can the movers pack on the morning instead?
- They can pack a few things, and it always costs more time than it saves. Anything beyond a couple of last boxes should be a packing visit of its own.
- 2Do I have to pack the kitchen myself?
- No, and you probably should not. Kitchens are the slowest room and the one where breakages happen, which is exactly why it is the room most part-packs include.
- 3What happens to the empty boxes?
- We collect them on a return visit. Reusable cartons come back to us; cardboard goes for recycling through your own collection or ours, and we will say which applies.
- 4Is packing different for a cross-border load?
- Very. Packing for a long road run accounts for vibration, movement and stacking over hundreds of miles, and the inventory has to match the customs paperwork item for item. It is slower and it is not optional on that route.
Tell us the stairs, not the boxes
Both addresses, what floor each one is on, where a vehicle can legally stand at either end, and the widest thing you own. That is what sets the crew — and the crew is what sets the price.