When you’re moving to a new home, you’re going to have a lot of stuff on your mind at the best of times: Selling or at the very least moving out of your old property, finding, paying for, and moving into your new one and all of the many different things which go along with that whole process. It can be completely time-consuming and it’s not unreasonable to think that you may miss a trick here or there and find that you’re far more overwhelmed by everything than you originally thought you would be.

When it comes to the actual process of packing and removals, there are a million or more different issues that you’re going to need to keep in mind ranging from space management (how does the stuff from your old house or flat fit into your new one? Will it even fit at all? Is there a strong size difference between the two properties which is likely to lead to you having to take a different approach to organizing your home?) to how you’re going to transport your goods in the first place. (Do you have the ability to make this a “DIY move”? Is your old home close enough to your new one that you can afford to make a few trips in your car, without it taking you hours and hours and costing you a ton of fuel? Do you have the type of furniture that will fit in your vehicle without risking damage? If not, do you have a friend or acquaintance with a van, who could help you out?)

With so much stuff going on to occupy your thoughts, it unsurprising that most people completely overlook the entire issue of boxes altogether, and just pick up the first type that they find in any shop that happen to look about right. In other words, they’d buy the first brown cardboard boxes that they’d find, without giving any thought to the other details involved.

Some of you would ask “what details could there possibly be to consider about moving boxes?”

Here are a couple of key points to keep in mind:
Size: The boxes you buy have to be big enough to fit everything that you’re planning to move between homes and which you won’t be able to transport “out in the open”. So, for example, you obviously won’t be trying to box your sofa – but it’s a very good bet that you’ll want to box up your computer or TV rather than just throwing them in the back of a car or van unprotected. You want a snug fit for whatever it is that you’re packing, so don’t count on the idea that you can just buy a bunch of “standard size” boxes and cram everything into those. You’re going to need to do some sort of survey of the items in your home, and consider what kind of box each item will need.

Protection: When packing your prized possessions into a series of boxes, one of the key things you’ll be hoping to ensure is that nothing gets broken. This is pretty much the whole purpose of boxing things up, after all (well, alongside easy transportation and keeping things organized and tidy during the move.) The fact is, it’s almost a certainty that you will have some delicate items that need extra care while being packed. Look into pre-padded boxes, or at the very least see how much bubble-wrap you would need in order to pack everything up snugly. You may even need to invest in wooden crates for especially delicate and valuable items.