How many moving boxes do you actually need?

There's a real sweet spot with boxes. Run short halfway through the pack and the whole job stalls while you chase more on a Sunday. Go overboard and you're flattening and binning cardboard you paid for. Here's how to land close.

A rough count by home size

• Studio or one bedroom, roughly 15 to 25.
• Two bedrooms, roughly 30 to 45.
• Three bedrooms, roughly 50 to 70.
• Four-plus bedrooms, 75 and up.

Then adjust for reality. Someone who's been in a two-bedder for ten years with a wall of books and a serious kitchen will out-box a half-empty three-bedroom rental every time.

The mix matters more than the number

Honestly, the count is the easy part. Getting the right types is what saves your back:

• Small boxes for the heavy, dense stuff: books, crockery, tins, tools.
• Medium boxes for the bulk of it: kitchenware, toys, the pantry.
• Large boxes for light and bulky only: doonas, pillows, lampshades, soft toys.
• Specialty boxes for hanging clothes (port-a-robes) and for glassware with dividers built in.

The classic mistake is buying a stack of large boxes because they look efficient. Then they get loaded with books, turn into something nobody can lift, and split at the base halfway down the stairs.

Buy a few extra, and keep them dry

Add about ten percent for the things everyone forgets exist until moving week: the shed, the bathroom cabinet, that one drawer. And store the flat-packed boxes somewhere dry. A box that's pulled in any damp off a garage floor loses most of its strength right when you go to load it.

The kit that isn't boxes

Tape, more than you think, plus a tape gun. Packing paper or butcher's paper, bubble wrap for the genuinely delicate, and a fat marker for labelling. Running out of tape stops a pack just as dead as running out of boxes, and it always seems to happen at 9pm with one room to go.