Is a packing service worth it?

The short version

What a full pack, a part pack and doing it yourself each mean

A full pack is exactly what the name suggests. A packing crew arrives with cartons, paper, tape and furniture covers, then works methodically from room to room until the entire property is boxed and labelled. For anything larger than a small flat this happens the day before the move rather than on the morning itself. You keep aside what you need for the night; the crew handles everything else.

A part pack is the arrangement most people choose, and it generally covers the fragile things: glassware, china, pictures, mirrors, lamps and anything framed. You deal with the books, the clothes, the shoes and the cupboard you have been intending to sort out. We price from wherever you decide the dividing line sits. The detail is on the packing services page.

Packing it yourself is a respectable option, and plenty of people should take it. Materials matter considerably more than technique: double-walled cartons, small cartons for heavy items, and every remaining void filled so that nothing can shift in transit. The complete version of that argument is in moving without a removal company.

The honest case for paying somebody to pack

Four arguments survive scrutiny, and the final one is the argument almost everybody underestimates.

Experienced packers are considerably quicker. A packer does this every week of the year, and is not simultaneously deciding what to keep, because that decision is not theirs. A kitchen that occupies four of your evenings occupies a crew for a morning.

The materials are better than supermarket boxes. Double-walled cartons, clean packing paper, proper tape, wardrobe cartons with a hanging rail, and boxes sized so a full one remains carriable. A carton collected from a supermarket is cheap because it has already completed one journey, and the second journey is the one carrying your possessions.

A carton the crew packed is the crew's own work. A removals firm can stand behind what its own people did. That is precisely why the insurance position on self-packed cartons is a question worth asking us, and worth asking every other firm you approach.

Packing is the task that overruns. This is the expensive one. People finish the bedrooms early, conclude that they are comfortably ahead of schedule, and then encounter the kitchen. The crew arrives on moving morning, discovers half the property still inside its cupboards, and ends up packing instead of loading. The vehicle leaves late and the day finishes in darkness. It is the commonest single reason our days overrun, and if your date is pinned to a completion, that is a risk worth eliminating.

The honest case against

If you have time, help and a flexible date, pack the house yourself and spend the money on the removal instead. That is not false modesty. Packing is the one component of a move that requires no vehicle, no insurance and no equipment whatsoever. It is labour and materials, and you are perfectly capable of supplying both.

Do it yourself when most of the following is true:

• Your date could move by a day or two without collapsing a chain behind you.
• You have two or three genuinely clear weekends beforehand, rather than one.
• Somebody else can help for at least one of those weekends.
• The property is mostly books, clothes, bedding and flat-pack, rather than glass and inherited china.
• You are prepared to buy proper cartons instead of collecting used ones.

The money saved is better committed to a larger crew, a second vehicle, or the fortnight of storage you will need if the chain slips. On a restricted budget, that order of priorities is the correct one, and anybody telling you differently is selling rather than advising.

When a packing service is worth it, and when it is not

Some moves are not close decisions at all.

Pay for packing if you are moving with a newborn, working full-time throughout the week of the move, clearing a property after a bereavement, or recovering from an injury that prevents lifting. Pay for it if the property holds unusual quantities of glass, china, pictures and lamps, or if the date was determined by somebody else and cannot be renegotiated.

Pack it yourself if the load is cartons rather than substantial furniture, the access is straightforward at both addresses, and nobody is waiting on keys. A modest man and van job with a week of notice rarely justifies a packing crew.

Where a part pack is the right answer

Most of our packing work is part packs, because the arithmetic is favourable. A small proportion of your possessions causes the overwhelming majority of breakages, and it is reliably the same proportion: anything glass, anything framed, anything ceramic, lampshades, and the entire kitchen.

So hand over that category and retain everything else. You pack the clothes, the books, the bedding and the garage, which is slow but undemanding and requires no particular skill. We pack the kitchen, because it is the room that consumes whole days: every item is a different shape, most of them break, and you cannot empty it early because you are still eating.

Electronics are a separate discipline, and they have their own guide: how to pack electronics for moving.

Where cost enters the conversation, there is no mystery about how we arrive at a number. We survey before we quote, the quote comes in writing, and the number you accept is the number you pay.

What nobody mentions about the other end

Two things only become apparent after the vehicle has driven away.

Unpacking takes longer than packing. Packing has an obvious finishing line. Unpacking does not, because every single item requires a decision about where it now permanently lives. Cartons sit in the hallway for a fortnight, then a month, then somebody suggests the loft. If that prospect would bother you, have unpacking priced alongside the packing, so the decision is made with a figure in front of you rather than at nine in the evening surrounded by cardboard.

Labelling by destination makes a move feel finished. A carton marked KITCHEN communicates nothing useful at the new address, because everything in the kitchen came from the kitchen. A carton marked KITCHEN, TOP CUPBOARDS, carrying the room it is going to, gets put down in the correct place once. Ask any firm whether it labels by the room things came from or the room they are travelling to. Ours is the second, and it costs nothing extra.

What to ask any firm before you book packing

Five questions, and the answers belong in writing.

• What materials are included? Cartons, paper, tape and covers should arrive with the crew. Establish whether they sit inside the quoted price or get invoiced afterwards.
• Who packs what? Write the dividing line down. Books and clothes yours, kitchen and fragiles theirs, or wherever you position it. A vague division becomes a disagreement on the morning.
• When do you come? The day before, or the morning of the move itself. For anything larger than a one-bedroom flat, the day before is the honest answer.
• Do you remove the empty cartons afterwards? Flattened cardboard and used paper have to go somewhere. Some firms collect, some do not, and some charge for collection.
• How does cover differ between cartons you packed and cartons I packed? It is a fair question to put to anybody, us included, and "insured" on its own does not answer it. Ask for the cover types and the applicable limits for each category of carton, in writing, before you book.

For the wider version of that conversation, choosing a removal company covers the survey, the quotation and the paperwork worth requesting.

Questions we get about paying for packing

Sources and basis

This guide is operational rather than statutory. It quotes no fees, prices or third-party figures, so there are no source documents to list. The judgements in it are our own, from running London house removals and packing jobs. Figures elsewhere on this site carry their source and the date we read it.