How to Pack for a Move: A Professional Organizer’s Guide

Think about the last time you had to pack up for a move. You probably took a look around and thought, okay, I really have to start packing now… and then you just sat down on the couch because the whole thing felt impossible. Right?

I get it. I’ve been there.

As a former military spouse, I’ve packed up my entire life more times than I can count, sometimes with only a few weeks’ notice (and with small children underfoot). And now, with a team of 15 organizers and over a decade of helping Maryland families move, I can tell you this: packing doesn’t have to be the part of moving that breaks you.

But it does take a plan.

If you haven’t already sorted through what’s coming with you and what’s not, pause here and start with our guide about where to start decluttering before a move. That step comes first. Everything in this post assumes you’ve already made those decisions and you’re ready to get things into boxes.

Here’s how to pack for a move the way our team does it, room by room, box by box, without the chaos.

Set Up a Packing Station Before You Do Anything Else

Before you tape a single box, find yourself a staging area. Pick a room you don’t use much right now, maybe your formal dining room, a spare bedroom, or a section of the garage, and turn it into your packing headquarters.

Stock your packing station with everything you’ll need:

• Boxes in three sizes. Small boxes are for heavy things like books and canned goods. Medium boxes are for most kitchen items, toys, and decor. Large boxes are for light, bulky things like pillows, linens, and lampshades. Don’t put heavy items in large boxes. Your back and your movers will thank you.
• Packing paper. Get the large sheets, and get way more than you think you’ll need. Way more. Professional movers almost exclusively use packing paper, and we’ve taken our cues from them. We rarely use bubble wrap for anything.
• Sharpies and tape.
• Colored painter’s tape if you want to use our labeling system (more on that below).

That’s really it. You don’t need specialty dish packs or elaborate packing kits. Boxes, packing paper, and Sharpies will get you through 95% of the job.

Where to Find Boxes Without Spending a Fortune

Moving boxes add up fast, and you don’t need to buy every single one brand new.

Check Facebook Marketplace first. In the spring, especially, families who have just finished a move are selling their boxes for next to nothing or just giving them away. Most of the time, they’re practically new, used one time. That’s how I always got rid of our boxes after military moves, and someone else always snapped them up. You can also check Nextdoor or ask your local liquor store for sturdy boxes they’re recycling anyway.

If you want to skip cardboard altogether, check into plastic moving crate rentals. They’re amazing! A company drops them off at your house, you pack them full of your stuff, the movers move them, and then the company picks them up after you unpack everything. You use less packing paper because the crates have hard lids that stack flat, and they’re so much better for the environment.

The catch is they only make economic sense if you’re packing and unpacking within about a week. You pay per week after the initial drop-off, so if you start packing two months early, the fees add up. But for a fast turnaround, or if you’re working with a team like ours, they’re worth every penny. Some movers love them because they stack like Tetris, but some won’t move them, so if you’re working with a moving company, ask them first.

What to Pack First When Moving

Everyone always waits too long to start packing. Every single time. Packing takes longer than you think, so the earlier you begin, the less frantic that last week will feel.

If you’ve already followed our decluttering guide, you may have already packed up some of the easy stuff, like holiday decorations, off-season clothing, and board games. Now it’s time to work through the rest of the house, starting with what you use the least and saving daily essentials for last.

Pack early: Your guest bedroom. Your linen closet (leave yourself a couple of towels and one set of sheets, pack everything else). Your office, stationery, and long-term files. Craft supplies. Most of the garage, though, leave yourself some basic tools for wall patching and last-minute fixes.

Pack in the middle: Off-season clothes and shoes, special occasion outfits, anything you’re not reaching for this month.

Pack last: Your bathroom. Your kitchen. Your everyday clothes.

If you don’t have big blocks of time, pack a couple of boxes a night. Stack them in a corner of the room or move them to your staging area. The point is to just start. Whether you work room by room or squeeze in a few boxes here and there between soccer practice and bedtime, momentum is everything.

How to Pack Boxes the Right Way

Here is the packing paper rule that will save you from a box full of broken dishes: the box needs to be firm when you close it. Not squishy, not hollow. Firm.

Start with a thick layer of packing paper on the bottom. Wrap every item individually. And then when you think you’re done, stuff more packing paper on top until the box doesn’t give when you press down. Because movers are going to stack boxes on top of boxes, and if there’s any give in that lid, the whole thing collapses. You cannot be stingy with packing paper. This is where that “buy way more than you think” advice comes back around.

A few more things we’ve learned after hundreds of moves:

Plates go vertical, not flat. Stand them up on their edges like records in a crate. Slide a paper plate between each one for extra cushion. They’re far less likely to crack this way.

Kitchens take longer than you think. Every dish, every glass, and every pot has to be individually wrapped. If you’re doing your own kitchen, either start really early, recruit a friend to help, or, honestly, leave the kitchen to the movers. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to outsource. Just make sure someone is in the room while they’re packing so the boxes get labeled correctly.

For items going into long-term storage, skip cardboard. Holiday decorations, children’s keepsakes, sentimental collections: pack those into latching bins instead of moving boxes. You don’t want things sitting in cardboard in basements or garages. Mice have a way of getting into cardboard boxes, and they don’t hold up. We did this for a client moving to the beach a few weeks ago. She packed all of her children’s keepsakes into matching bins, one per child, and her holiday decor into another set. When we got to the new house, we put them straight onto the shelves. No unpacking needed. It saves time and money on the other end.

Lamps and artwork? Leave those for the movers. They’ll bring specialty boxes and padding. If the movers aren’t handling them, you can also transport framed pieces and small lamps in your car, where you can control how they’re handled.

And for hanging clothes, wardrobe boxes are nice, but they’re expensive. A more affordable option: pick up some zippered garment bags or hanging bags on Amazon, fold your clothes into them with the hangers still on, and the movers can carry them just like that.

How to Label Boxes Like a Pro Organizer

This is the part most people get wrong, and it will cost you hours on the other end as you search for your coffee mugs in a sea of boxes that all say “Kitchen.”

The number one rule: label every box for where it’s going in the new house, not where it lived in the old one.

This sounds obvious, but it trips people up constantly. If your playroom was in the basement at your old house but will be in the living room at your new house, label that box “Living Room,” not “Basement.” Same with anything moving from a garage to an attic, a spare room to an office, whatever the case may be. Think about the destination, always.

Write the room name and a brief description of the contents on two sides of the box: the top and one side of the box. When a mover is carrying the box, they look down. When boxes are stacked, you read the side. This way, someone can always see where it goes, no matter how the box is positioned.

For moves where some things are going to the new house, some are being donated, and some are staying behind to stage the old house, we use a colored painter’s tape system:

• Blue tape = goes to the new house
• Green tape = donation
• Red tape = stop, stays in the old house

We put the tape on every single item and piece of furniture that’s moving, and we create a master key so the movers know the system. This matters more than you might think. Movers are charging by the hour, and they want to move fast. You can’t be in every room at the same time. The color system makes it crystal clear what goes and what stays without anyone having to chase you down and ask.

The “Open First” Box (And Why You Need One)

Start this box early. Like, right now.

Add some bright tape to a box, orange if you have it, something that stands out. Write “OPEN FIRST” on it in big letters. This is the box that’s going to save you at 10 p.m. on moving day when you’re exhausted, and all you want is your bed made and a cup of coffee waiting for the morning.

Here’s what goes in that box: sheets for your bed that night, a set of towels, the coffee maker and everything you need to make a pot, your remote controls, your phone charger, paper towels, and any important documents or keys you’ll need right away.

The trick is to mentally walk through your first 24 hours in the new house. What do you need to sleep, shower, eat, and function? That goes in this box. Nothing else.

Don’t pack your sheets with your linens. Don’t put your coffee maker in with the rest of the kitchen. Put them in the open first box. Label it “Kitchen” so it ends up with the kitchen stuff, or even better, put it in your car so you know exactly where it is.

Separately, pack overnight bags for each family member, just like you’re going on a trip. Include pajamas, toiletries, the outfit you need for tomorrow, and your medications. We put all the suitcases in a bathtub and taped a big X across it with painter’s tape so the movers know not to pack them.

Packing With Children? Here’s How to Keep the Peace

Pack up everything they’re not currently playing with, like out-of-rotation toys, books they’ve outgrown, and most of their clothes. But their loveys, the bedtime bear, the stuffed animal they can’t sleep without, those go in their suitcase. Not in a box.

Save their favorite games and activities for the very last round of packing. And here’s something most families don’t think about: label one box of children’s stuff “Unpack First.” Because sometimes the smartest move is to set up the playroom before you unpack anything else. If your children have toys and something to do, you can actually get work done in the kitchen without someone hanging off your leg asking for a snack every four minutes.

What to Keep in Your Car, Not the Moving Truck

Anything truly irreplaceable should travel with you, not in the back of the moving truck.

That means your important documents (passports, birth certificates, all your IDs), medications, expensive jewelry, and anything sentimental that would devastate you if it got lost or damaged. Valuables, electronics, purses, anything you’d be sick about. Put it in your car.

Movers also have a list of things they won’t transport, and it’s longer than most people expect: open containers like cooking oils and liquid skincare products, plants, propane tanks, and anything with gas in it. We just did a move where the movers refused to take a ride-on lawnmower because it had gas in the tank. (For the full list of what movers won’t move and what to do with hazardous materials, check our pre-move decluttering guide.)

Some specialty items, like pianos, Peloton bikes, grandfather clocks, and gun safes, may need specialty movers. Ask about all of this when you’re getting your quote.

One more thing most people don’t know: a moving company’s basic insurance doesn’t cover much. If you have valuables, ask about full replacement value coverage before moving day. And here’s an insider tip: if you pack a box yourself, some movers won’t insure it because they didn’t pack it. That’s a really important question to ask when you’re comparing moving companies. It might change what you pack yourself versus what you let them handle.

When Packing Feels Like Too Much

Moving is consistently ranked as one of the most stressful life events. We know that. And sometimes the right move is to stop trying to do it all yourself.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that you can hire a professional organizer to coordinate the packing process without doing the physical packing yourself. We’ll be on site labeling every box, color-coding, making sure the contents are accurate, and keeping the movers on track. You get all the organization without having to wrap a single plate.

And unpacking? That’s really where we shine. But that’s a whole other post.

One story that sticks with me: a few years ago, two of our team members, Christi and Trisha, were helping an older woman downsize after her husband passed away. She needed to pack up the house she’d lived in for decades, and she was having a hard time letting go.  She sat at her kitchen table while she had her tea, and they’d hold up items from the kitchen one at a time. Do you want to keep this, donate it, or let it go?

And with so many of those items, she’d tell them a story. Where they bought it. A dinner party they’d hosted. A trip they’d taken together. She processed her memories through her belongings, out loud, with two people who genuinely cared. By the end of it, she told them that she finally felt ready to let go and leave the house to her son and his family.. 

That is the part of this work that doesn’t show up in a packing checklist. Your stuff is attached to a lot of emotions, and we understand that.

If you’re planning a move in the Annapolis area, or anywhere in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard, Prince George’s, Queen Anne’s, or Talbot counties, reach out for a consultation. We’ll walk through your space, build a custom plan, and help make your move feel manageable instead of overwhelming. For a behind-the-scenes look at what a full-service move looks like with our team, check out how one Maryland family skipped the chaos entirely.

Happy organizing!

Frequently Asked Questions