A Comprehensive Guide to Pack a House: Timelines, Tips, and Techniques

By: Tommy Loutzenheiser Last Updated: May 11, 2024

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If you’re planning a move, one of the first things to consider is a plan of action to pack your house. Here, we’ll give you a full in depth guide on packing your house for your big move.


A Comprehensive Guide to Pack a House: Timelines, Tips, and Techniques

Generally speaking, packing your house should take anywhere from 3-6 weeks. This covers everything from the pre-packing phase, to packing everything up, and getting it safely transported.

There’s also a lot of other factors to consider such as donating items, figuring out if certain items need to be specially packed, and how to save the most amount of time possible.


What You’ll Need

Before anything gets packed, gather all of your supplies together in one space. These supplies include but are not limited to tape, boxes, bubble wrap, packing peanuts, and dollys.

Having these items beforehand will make your life a whole lot easier when it comes to packing.


The Pre-Packing Phase

This includes a short period of time where you develop a rough game plan on how you’re going to pack your belongings up.

This includes calling friends to help, starting to donate things that won’t go with you, and finding the right moving company.


Tips For Each Room

The best way to pack your home is to go room by room, but since each room is different and will require certain packing techniques, here’s some quick tips for packing each room.

  • The Living Room: First, disconnect any cords from televisions, routers, or electronics, and tape the cords to the corresponding device. You’ll then want to cover them with an anti-static bubble wrap to protect these devices from damage. As far as furniture goes, disassemble it into
  • The Bedroom: You can buy specialized wardrobe boxes that are fit for packing your clothes. Some even come with built in hangers for easy accessibility. As for your personal items, carrying them in a small bag and not giving them to the moving truck is your best option
  • The Bathroom: When packing your bathroom, it’s important to dispose of any expired, near empty, or leaking products. This could include shampoo, toothpaste, shaving cream, and more.
  • The Garage: If you have any gasoline powered machinery, you’ll need to drain the fluid because movers won’t handle flammable liquids.

Fragile and Speciality Items

When moving items that run the risk of getting broken, damaged, or damaging other items, you can pack them with a few tricks to minimize the risk of any damage to your stuff.

Leave a small amount of extra room and protect these items with packing peanuts or bubble wrap, and label the boxes as fragile, so your moving company knows to handle them with care.


Packing Large Items

If you have the ability to dismantle larger items such as furniture, it’s the safest bet to guarantee your couch, bed, or chairs remain undamaged throughout the moving process.

If an item cannot be dismantled, you can use furniture pads or bubble wrap to protect the item from any damage.


Save Time, Save Work

When moving, time management should be your number one priority. It will minimize the amount of work you and the moving company have to do, and will overall make your moving process so much easier.

Follow these three simple steps to save the most amount of time possible while packing your home.

  1. Set a Schedule: Moving and packing your entire house can seem daunting, and since this process can take 3-6 weeks in total, it’s best to make a schedule for the tasks you want to complete each day.
  2. Speed Up Your Packing: 2 weeks before you start packing, make every effort to keep your house as clean as possible, and throw anything away that doesn’t need to be there. Then, come time to pack your house, you’ll be stress free and ready to pack as quickly as possible.
  3. Take Breaks: Sure, a 14 hour work day of nonstop packing is great, but it’s not sustainable. Take your breaks, don’t sacrifice sleep, and you’ll end up getting your packing done quicker than someone who fully burns out a week into the process.

Final Steps

After you’ve packed each room, do a clean sweep and make sure everything is packed and ready to go. It’s like checking out of a hotel – you have to double check that you have everything.

Did you call your utilities provider and make sure you won’t receive any future billings? Did you secure doors and drawers on your dressers and closet so they won’t get damaged during transit? Did you properly pack all fragile items to prevent damage?

These are all great questions to ask yourself as final touching points that will help your move be seamless and easy.

At the end of the day, it’s your moving company’s job to transport your belongings safely to your new home, but it’s your job to pack them properly to help your moving company do so. The more time you put into properly packing your house, the better experience you’ll have moving.