Re-ironing a whole wardrobe on day one in the new house is no one's idea of a relaxing arrival. Here is how to keep clothes crease-free in transit.
After the kitchen, the second-biggest 'will-we-be-OK?' worry on most house moves is the wardrobe. People imagine waking up at the new house and finding a knotted ball of crumpled fabric where their work shirts used to be. It's a solvable problem, and on a properly-equipped packing service we use four specific techniques that get clothes from old wardrobe to new wardrobe without a single iron stroke. This guide walks through them.
The core principle: keep clothes on their hangers wherever possible, and where they have to be folded, use the right kind of fold and the right kind of carton. Drag-and-stuff into a black bin liner is the worst possible approach. The right materials cost almost nothing and the right method takes no longer than the wrong one.
The single best way to move clothes wrinkle-free is the hanging wardrobe carton — a tall reinforced cardboard box with a built-in metal hanging rail across the top. Clothes go directly from your wardrobe rail to the carton rail without being folded or removed from their hangers. Suits, dresses, work shirts and tailored items arrive at the new house in exactly the state they left.
We supply hanging wardrobe cartons with every full packing service and you can also rent them separately for self-pack jobs. A typical wardrobe takes two to four of these cartons. They're not cheap to buy but they're reusable — we collect them after the move and re-use them on the next job, which keeps the per-move cost low.
For self-pack moves, we can drop the cartons off three to four days before move day, you load them at your own pace, and the crew loads them onto the lorry straight from your bedroom on move morning. Talk to us at survey stage and we'll include them in the quote.
For clothes that don't need to stay on hangers — t-shirts, jeans, jumpers, casual wear — the right approach is to pack them folded in a single carton per drawer's worth, with tissue between layers for delicate fabrics. Don't overfill: an under-filled carton crushes less under the lorry's weight than a stuffed one.
Knitwear and jumpers fold differently from cotton t-shirts. For knitwear, fold sleeves inward and fold the whole jumper in half. For t-shirts, the supermarket-folding-board method works fine — keep the fold even and stack each item flat. Heavy items (jeans, jumpers) at the bottom, lighter items (t-shirts, vests) on top.
For sensitive fabrics — silk, fine wool, anything you take to the dry-cleaners — put a sheet of acid-free packing tissue between each piece. We stock proper packing tissue at our Lower Dicker packaging shop; the household variety from the supermarket works fine for most clothing but isn't acid-free for long-term storage.
Vacuum-pack bags (the big plastic bags you suck the air out of with a vacuum cleaner) are excellent for one specific use case: bulky bedding, duvets, winter coats and large jumpers. They shrink the volume by roughly 75% and the items pack into a fraction of the carton space.
They are not the right solution for tailored clothing, anything that creases easily, or anything you intend to wear within a week of arrival. The compression that vacuum-packing relies on flattens shirt collars, jacket lapels and pleats in trousers. Use vacuum bags for what they're designed for, not as a general clothing solution.
For winter coats and ski jackets being moved into storage (we offer self-storage at our depot), vacuum-packing is also useful because it reduces the carton count and therefore the storage cost. Just unpack the bag for an hour every few months to let the fabric breathe.
Shoes go in their original boxes wherever possible. The boxes were designed for the shoes; nothing else fits the shape as well. If you've thrown the boxes away, the alternative is to wrap each pair in tissue and pack them in small cartons of six to eight pairs each, separated by a layer of tissue. Don't mix shoes with clothes — sole dirt transfers onto fabric and you'll be cleaning it for weeks.
Handbags hold their shape better if you stuff them with tissue or bubble wrap before packing. Same goes for hats and millinery. For high-value items — designer handbags, family-jewellery cases, watch boxes — we'd recommend they travel with you in your own car rather than in the lorry, regardless of how carefully they're packed. Standard goods-in-transit insurance excludes high-value individual items unless they're declared in advance.
Jewellery, watches and small valuables follow the same rule. Don't put them in the lorry — pack them in a small bag and travel with them yourself. We'll cover the practical details at survey and the choosing a remover guide has more on what insurance covers.
By the week of the move you should be down to the clothes you're currently wearing. The seasonal wardrobe (winter coats in summer, summer shirts in winter) should have been packed two weeks earlier. The everyday wardrobe gets packed on the Wednesday-to-Friday before move day, with one small overnight bag containing two days' worth of clothes that travels with you in your car.
That overnight bag is more important than people realise. Lorries sometimes get delayed by traffic, chains slip by a day, completions can run late. If your suitcase of work clothes is on the wrong side of a delayed lorry, you have a problem. Keep two outfits with you, no exceptions.
Once the move is complete and the wardrobes are set up at the new house, our crew can hang the contents of the hanging wardrobe cartons directly into your new wardrobe on the same day. This is included in any unpacking service you've booked. For self-unpacking customers, the cartons stand upright in the bedroom and you can pull clothes from the rail directly.
Free in-home or video survey, written fixed-price quote, BAR-protected deposit. Sussex’s family-run remover since 1982.
Two weeks before move day: pack out-of-season clothes (winter coats in summer, summer shirts in winter) into folded cartons. One week before: pack everything except your current working wardrobe and an overnight bag’s worth of essentials into hanging wardrobe cartons. The morning of move day: transfer the last few hangers to the cartons, pack the overnight bag into your own car, and you’re done.
The overnight bag deserves emphasis. Two days’ worth of clothes, your toilet bag, your phone charger, the laptop you actually use for work, prescription medications. These all travel with you, not in the lorry. If the lorry gets stuck in traffic and arrives at 6pm instead of 2pm, you still have everything you need for the night.
On the unload, our crews can hang the contents of the wardrobe cartons directly into your new wardrobe rails as part of the unpacking service. The cartons themselves are reusable and we collect them back to use on the next move — one of the small details that keeps the per-move cost down. For more on the move-day packing flow generally, the packing-order guide walks through the full sequence.
We've been a family-run Sussex remover since 1982 — the same name on the lorry as the name on the paperwork. Mark personally surveys the high-value and overseas moves; our crews are directly employed (not casual day labour) and trained at our own staff training centre, one of only a handful of UK removers with that facility on site.
Standard inclusions on every full removal: pad-wrap protection for every freestanding piece of furniture, removal-grade cartons, a written and itemised fixed-price quote with no surprises on the day, and the British Association of Removers' Advance Payment Guarantee protecting every deposit. The result, over forty years and tens of thousands of moves, is a 4.9/5 review average across 120+ independent Google reviews.
Booking the survey takes ten minutes. Whether it's a one-bedroom flat across Eastbourne or a country house to overseas, the process is the same: in-home or video survey, written quote within 48 hours, deposit-protected booking, and a calm move day.
Not if they travel in hanging wardrobe cartons. Clothes go from your old wardrobe rail to the carton rail without being folded or unhooked from hangers.
Not recommended. Bin liners offer no protection from creasing, snagging or external pressure. The wardrobe carton is reusable and the small extra cost saves you a weekend of ironing.
Only for bulky bedding, duvets and casual winter coats. Don't use them for tailored shirts, suits or anything that needs to look pressed on arrival — vacuum compression flattens collars and lapels.
Original boxes wherever possible. If not, wrap each pair in tissue and pack six to eight pairs per small carton with tissue between. Never mix shoes and clothing — sole dirt transfers.
No. Travel with you in your own car. Standard transit insurance excludes high-value individual items unless they're declared in advance on the contract.