Should you hire packers? Cost, timing, and what to expect

What packing services include

A professional packing service does more than box things up. The materials and the method are most of the value, so that things arrive intact and you can find them afterwards.

• Boxes, paper, bubble wrap, and tape, brought to you
• Room-by-room packing with contents labeled by room
• Proper wrapping for fragile items: dishes on edge, glasses individually, voids filled
• Specialty handling for artwork, mirrors, electronics, and lamps
• Wardrobe boxes so hanging clothes stay on their hangers
• Optional unpacking at the other end, with the empties taken away

Full, partial, or fragile-only

You don't have to choose between packing everything yourself and paying for everything. Partial packing is the most common arrangement and usually the best value.

The sensible split is to hand over the rooms where breakage and time concentrate, meaning the kitchen, the artwork, glassware, and anything display-cased, and handle books, clothes, linens, and the garage yourself. Those are bulky but forgiving, and they're the parts you can do in evenings without much risk.

How packing is priced

Packing is generally charged on the labor plus the materials: how much needs packing, how fragile it is, and how many boxes and how much paper it consumes. A kitchen full of glassware consumes far more material than a bedroom of the same size.

Ask for packing to appear on your written quote as its own line rather than folded into a single move number. It makes it much easier to decide whether to scale it back to partial packing once you see what it costs.

How long packing takes

The honest answer is that it depends on how much you own far more than on the square footage of your home. Two identical apartments can be a half-day apart.

A studio or one-bedroom is often a few hours for a crew. A family home with a full kitchen, a garage, and a decade of accumulation can take a crew most of a day or longer. Doing it yourself takes several times longer than a trained crew, because you stop to look at things and they don't.

The kitchen is almost always the longest single room in any house. If you take one thing from this guide, start there.

When hiring packers is clearly worth it

• You're moving on short notice and don't have the evenings
• You have a lot of fragile or high-value items
• You're moving long distance, where poor packing has a much longer time to fail
• You're pregnant, injured, elderly, or moving a parent's home
• Your employer is covering relocation, where packing is commonly included
• You've tried and you're behind, which is the most common reason people call

You can hire packers without hiring the movers

This surprises people, but packing is a service you can book on its own. If you've rented a truck, booked another company, or you're on a corporate relocation that covers transport but not packing, you can hire a crew just to pack the house.

The same goes at the other end. Unpacking can be booked separately from everything else, including the removal of every empty box and sheet of paper. That is a larger volume than most people plan for, and it will not fit in a domestic recycling bin.