There is a correct order to pack a house. Get it right and the last week is calm; get it wrong and you'll be sleeping on cardboard the night before move day.
Almost everyone we survey asks the same question at some point: what should we actually pack first? The instinct is to start in the most visible room — the living room or the kitchen — and the result is a fortnight of living out of half-packed cupboards. After forty years of packing Sussex homes we have a clear, tested order. This guide walks through it.
The principle is simple: pack the rooms you use least first, and finish with the rooms you genuinely need until move morning. That means lofts and outbuildings come early, kitchens and bathrooms come last. A 'first night' carton lives separately. Below is the order, broken into weeks, with the specific items to target at each stage.
The loft and the garage are where the surprises live. Almost every survey we do finds twice the volume the customer expected — boxes of family photos, retired crockery sets, the Christmas decorations, the camping gear that hasn't been used since 2014. Pull it all down onto the living-room floor and decide what's going, what's going to charity and what's going to the tip. This decision is much easier weeks before the move than the night before.
Old boxes from the loft are usually past their best — damp, dust-weakened cardboard that won't survive a lorry journey. Repack into removal-grade cartons with fresh tape. Label each carton with the room and a brief contents note, and number them so you can find anything during the move.
If you're using a full packing service on the day before move day, you can leave the loft and garage to the crew. But pulling it down ahead of time still saves you money — what's not coming with you doesn't need to be quoted, packed or moved.
The second wave is anything you don't actively use day-to-day but want to keep. Books are at the top of this list. Pack books into small book cartons (no larger than 25cm cubed) because a large carton of books bursts under its own weight. Tape the carton bottoms with a double layer of vinyl tape and label them.
Decorations, ornaments, picture frames and the contents of display cabinets go next. These are the items that need real care — bubble wrap, internal tissue, vertical stacking for plates, padded wrapping for framed art. Our fragile items packing guide walks through the specific techniques. If you'd rather not do it yourself, we offer a fragile-only pack the day before move day at a flat per-house rate.
This is also the week to pack archive paperwork — old bank statements you still need, tax documents, family records, kids' school certificates. Keep these in a labelled, weatherproof box and move it with you in your own car rather than in the lorry. Same goes for jewellery and any cash.
By the week of the move you should be down to the everyday-use rooms. Pack wardrobes using hanging-wardrobe cartons (we drop these off the day before) — clothes go straight from rail to carton without folding. Out-of-season clothes have already been packed in week two; what's left is what you're currently wearing.
Linens, towels and bedding (except the bed that's actually in use) pack at this stage. Strip the spare-room beds, pack the duvets in clear bin liners (cheaper and works fine), and label each one with the room destination. Hobby gear — guitars, sewing kits, gardening tools that aren't currently being used — comes out now too.
If you have pets, the week before is when to organise their day-of arrangements. Many Eastbourne and Sussex customers we move arrange for a friend or pet-sitter to take dogs and cats away on move day; the lorry-noise plus open doors plus strangers can be genuinely stressful for animals. We've seen customers regret not arranging this more than just about any other planning miss.
The kitchen is always the hardest room because almost every item is fragile, valuable in aggregate, or needed in the morning. The order: china and serving platters (Tuesday before), then non-essential glassware and the appliances (Wednesday), then the bulk of the cookware (Thursday), then the day-of essentials (Friday — kettle, two mugs, tea, biscuits, one set of cutlery and plates).
That last 'first-night' carton is the most important box in the whole house. It contains the things you'll need within an hour of arriving at the new place: kettle, mugs, tea bags, kitchen towel, a phone charger, basic toiletries, a tin of food for the cat. Tape it red and load it last so it comes off first. Several of our regular customers do this and swear by it.
The bathroom is similar — pack the cabinet contents (medicine, spare toothbrushes, bath products you don't use weekly) on Wednesday, leave the daily-use items in their pack until Friday morning, then transfer them into the toilet bag and they travel with you in the car. Don't forget the towel rail — most people leave a towel hanging there until the day of the move.
By the morning of move day everything should be packed except the four or five last-mile items: one kettle, the bed linen you slept in last night, the bathroom toilet bag, the first-night carton, and any work-from-home laptop and chargers. The crew arrives, pad-wraps the furniture in your home (this is our signature pad-wrap method), loads the lorry in the right sequence, and you do the final walk-through of the property.
Check every cupboard, drawer, loft hatch and outbuilding before the keys go back. Take a photo of every wall, every socket and every meter reading — these are invaluable if there's a deposit dispute or a billing question later. If you've been a tenant, leave the property at least as clean as you found it; we have a house clearance service if you've inherited rubbish from a previous resident.
Then it's done. The lorry leaves; you follow in your own car; the crew is on the driveway at the new property ten minutes before you arrive. The whole reason for packing in the right order is so that the last morning is calm, not chaotic. Our team have done this thousands of times — if you want the order applied for you, talk to us at survey stage and we'll handle the whole pack.
Free in-home or video survey, written fixed-price quote, BAR-protected deposit. Sussex’s family-run remover since 1982.
Even with a sensible packing order, three mistakes consistently make move day late. First, leaving the kitchen too late. The kitchen always takes twice as long as people expect — pack the non-essentials on the Wednesday before, not the Friday before. Second, packing the loft hatch closed without inspecting it. Anything still up there at 8am on move day becomes a frantic last-minute extraction.
Third, underestimating the garden shed and outbuildings. They’re physically separate from the house so the natural walk-through misses them. Treat the shed as its own room in the pack-order schedule, and pack it during week 4–6 not the day before. Petrol-driven garden equipment needs the fuel drained before the lorry will take it — a job nobody wants to do at 7am.
If you’re weighing whether to do this yourself or use our full packing service, the most useful comparison is hours. Self-packing a three-bedroom house is roughly 30–50 hours of labour spread over three weeks. Our crew does the same job in 6–10 hours the day before move day, with a written room-by-room inventory included. For busy families, the maths is straightforward. For more on packing-service options, see the benefits guide.
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.
Start the loft and the garage four to six weeks ahead. Books and decorations at two to four weeks. Wardrobes and linens the week before. Kitchen and bathroom in the final 48 hours. The 'first-night' carton last.
Pack the non-essentials (serving platters, second-best china, baking trays) but leave everyday cookware, glasses and one cutlery set until the day before. You'll need to eat right up to move morning.
Yes — a full pack the day before move day is one of our most popular services. The crew packs everything from books to kitchen china, supplies the materials, and labels every carton room-by-room.
One carton, taped red, packed last and loaded onto the lorry last so it comes off first at the new house. Kettle, two mugs, tea, kitchen towel, phone charger, basic toiletries. The single most useful box of the move.
Jewellery, cash, passports, important documents, prescription medications, the laptop you work on. These travel with you in your own car. Standard removal insurance excludes high-value valuables anyway.