Moving boxes and packing supplies: what you actually need

For bedding, cushions, lampshades and coats — bulky things that weigh almost nothing. Never fill a large box with books; nobody will be able to lift it.

The workhorse. Books, kitchen cupboards, files, shoes. Double-walled if you are stacking them more than three high.

Tall boxes with a hanging rail, so suits and dresses travel on their hangers and arrive uncreased. Expensive per box, and the one item most people wish they had bought.

Flat, telescopic boxes for framed art, mirrors and TVs. A framed picture packed flat in a normal box is a picture with a crack in it.

48mm wide, at least 50 microns thick. Tape the base seam twice, in both directions — most box failures are a base giving way, not a side.

A pistol-grip dispenser turns taping a box from a two-handed fight into two seconds. Worth it from about twenty boxes upwards.

Printed warning tape. Removal crews genuinely do load these boxes last and stack them on top, so it is not decoration.

Large bubbles for cushioning, small bubbles for surface protection. Wrap with the bubbles facing inward, against the object.

Plain newsprint, not newspaper — printing ink transfers onto crockery and white goods. Also fills the gaps that let things rattle.

Heavy polythene covers. A mattress that spends twenty minutes on a wet London pavement is a mattress you replace.

Slip-in sleeves for glasses, stemware and small ceramics. Faster than wrapping each piece and better protection than paper alone.

Chisel-tip, black, several of them. Write the room and two or three contents on two sides of every box.

One colour per room, with a matching sheet on each door at the new place. The crew then unloads to the right room without asking, which is what actually saves you time.

A thermal label printer prints legible box labels far faster than handwriting them, and is genuinely useful afterwards for storage and cables. Overkill for a studio, worth it for a house.

Number every box and keep a list. If something goes missing, a numbered inventory is what turns a claim from an argument into a form.

A retractable blade with a proper grip. Keep one taped inside a kitchen cupboard door so it is not packed in the box you need it to open.

Ratchet straps for securing loads and lifting straps for awkward furniture. London staircases are the reason both exist.

Worth buying rather than hiring if you have more than one flight of stairs or a long walk to the van. Folds flat afterwards.

Self-adhesive carpet film and door frame padding. Deposit deductions for scuffed hallways are far more common than for anything dramatic.