Move Planning Notes
Packing is the one line of the bill you control directly, because materials are only 20-40% of what a crew charges to do it.
When a crew packs, you pay for their time plus the cartons, paper and wrap — and the materials component alone is typically 20-40% of the price. Self-packing removes the labour entirely, which is why the usual saving comes from packing the kitchen and the boxes nobody uses yourself.
The sequence matters more than the speed. Start three to four weeks out with the rooms used least — storage areas, the guest room, books — and finish with the kitchen and daily items in the last days. Packing in the wrong order means repacking, and repacking is where cartons get crushed.
Labelling is the cheapest insurance on the move. Every carton gets its destination room and a priority mark; the alternative is the unlabelled wall at delivery — forty identical boxes and no way to find the bedding on the first night.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Keep one essentials carton accessible and load it last: kettle, chargers, bedding, documents, medication, basic tools. It is the difference between a functional first night and a week of living out of boxes — the bottleneck unpack that people remember longest.
Delivery day has its own physics. Stairs and carries beyond roughly 75 feet are chargeable at the destination just as at origin, and an elevator in a building under four floors is usually the cheaper way up. Direct cartons to their labelled rooms as they come off the truck and the unpacking labour halves.
Close out the conventional extras: on a full-service move in North America a tip of about 20% is customary, it is never in the quote, and it is usually handed over in cash once the last carton is in. For how this line fits the rest of the bill, see What a move costs.
Further reading