Alltime Removals has been packing homes across Bedfordshire since 2002. AIM-registered, MoveAssured approved and rated 4.8 stars on Reallymoving, most of our work still comes from word of mouth in Houghton Regis, Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard and Luton. The same moving-day chaos shows up house after house: the kitchen half packed, the loft untouched, and the kettle nowhere to be found. Packing room by room is the fix. It turns one giant job into a set of small ones, gives every box a clear destination, and lets you load the lorry in the order that helps you unpack fastest.
The guide below is the one we walk customers through during a survey visit, written out in full so you can use it whether you book a removals firm or pack the house yourself. If you want a survey visit and a tailored removals quote from our team, the form takes a minute.
Why a Room-by-Room Packing Plan Works
A move is not one job. It is twenty small jobs that all need to land on the same morning. A room-by-room plan keeps each one in its own box, both in your head and in the lorry.
It works for three reasons. The first is decision speed. Every item in a kitchen drawer needs the same call: keep, donate, bin, pack. Tackling a whole drawer in one sitting is far quicker than wandering between rooms. The second is labelling. When every box leaves the house with a single room name on it, the crew loads by destination and unloads straight into the right room. No stacking in the hall, no carrying boxes twice. The third is energy. You finish a room and you can see the progress. Half a kitchen and half a wardrobe at the end of an evening feels like nothing got done.
We always pack from the room furthest from the front door inwards. The kitchen and the hallway go last, so the house stays liveable for as long as possible and the loaded boxes are nearest the lorry on moving day.
You will need book boxes for anything heavy, larger tea chests for everything else, bubble wrap, plenty of tape, a permanent marker, and a roll of “fragile” stickers. We supply all of these to anyone who books a move with us, and we offer a separate packing service that runs from breakables only up to a full pack and unpack with material disposal. Decide which one you are doing before week two, not the day before. If you are sorting as you pack, our guide on how to declutter before a house move helps you decide what actually needs a box.
How to Pack the Kitchen
The kitchen is the room that breaks if you rush it, so plan it as the longest single packing job in the house.
Start with the cupboards you use least: the stand mixer you use twice a year, the roasting tins, the vases. Wrap each piece in bubble wrap or two layers of clean paper, stand glasses upright in the box rather than on their sides, and pack heavy items in the smallest box that will hold them. A book box full of crockery is liftable. A tea chest full of crockery is not.
Plates go on their edges, not flat. Stacking plates flat puts the weight of the whole stack on the bottom plate and crushes it the first time the box is set down hard. Stand them up against the box wall like records in a sleeve, with bubble wrap between each one.
Glassware fills the gaps. Wrap each glass, sit them upright in a tea chest, and use scrunched paper to fill the air pockets. Air pockets are what break things in transit, not the lorry.
Pack a “first morning” kitchen kit and keep it with you: kettle, two mugs, tea bags, coffee, sugar, a few spoons, a sharp knife, washing-up liquid, a tea towel, kitchen roll, a bin bag and the corkscrew. That kit goes in your own car, not the lorry, and comes out first when you arrive.
Run the freezer down for at least a fortnight before the move and defrost it fully the night before. A full upright freezer takes around twenty-four hours to defrost and drain, which is why this job belongs in the final week, not on moving day.
Label every kitchen box on two sides and the top with the word “Kitchen” and a one-line note on the contents. “Kitchen, everyday plates.” “Kitchen, glasses.” “Kitchen, first morning kit, do not load.” The crew loads by destination. You unpack by note.
How to Pack Bedrooms
Bedrooms pack faster than the kitchen if you do them in the right order.
Strip the wardrobe first. Wardrobe boxes keep hanging clothes on their hangers and ready to hang the moment the wardrobe is back together at your new address. Folded clothes go in tea chests with a soft layer of bedding on top to fill the box and protect the contents. Heavy coats go at the bottom. Hats and shoes get their own box.
Strip the bed last. Bag the bedding by room so each bed can be made up first thing the first night, and tape the bag to the headboard once the bed is dismantled. We always reassemble beds before anything else at the destination, because a tired family with a made bed copes far better with the chaos around it.
Children’s rooms get the gentlest treatment. Pack the room with the child if they are old enough, let them choose what goes in the “first night” bag, and keep favourite toys, comfort blankets and a couple of bedtime books out of the lorry entirely. Those travel with you. The bedroom is what makes a strange new house feel like home on night one.
Disassemble bed frames, wardrobes and chests of drawers either yourself or as part of a removals service. If you do it yourself, bag every screw, dowel and Allen key in a clear freezer bag and tape it to the largest panel of the piece it came from. Our crews dismantle and reassemble as standard.
Label every bedroom box with the room name as it will be used in the new house: “Master bedroom”, “Lily’s room”, “Spare bedroom”. Not the old room name. The crew loads to the destination, not the origin.
How to Pack the Living Room
The living room has fewer items than the kitchen but more fragile ones, and a lot more cabling.
Photograph the back of the television and the AV stack before you unplug anything. Bag each cable by device with a sticky label. The five minutes it takes the night before saves an hour at the property you are moving into.
Wrap pictures and mirrors with corner protectors and a layer of bubble wrap, then stand them on their edges between two flat-packed boxes in the lorry. Never lay them flat. A flat picture under any weight is a cracked picture.
Books pack into book boxes only. Lay them flat in rows, fill any gaps at the top with paperbacks or paper, and tape the box well. A full book box is heavy but liftable for one person. A tea chest of books is a back injury.
Lamps split into two parts. The base goes in a tea chest with bubble wrap. The shade goes in its own box, top down, with paper inside to hold its shape. Sofa cushions go in vacuum bags so the lorry takes the cushion contents but a fraction of the volume.
If you are short on time, this is the room a packing crew can finish in the smallest window. Living rooms are mostly soft, mostly fragile, and respond well to a fast pair of trained hands.
How to Pack Bathrooms
The bathroom is small, but it is the room people leave to the last hour and then panic over.
Throw out anything past its date: half-empty bottles, expired tablets, old sun cream and the makeup at the back of the cabinet. Most medication has to go to a pharmacy take-back scheme rather than down the sink, and the pharmacist will help you separate the prescription items from the rest.
Pack toiletries upright in a small box lined with a bin bag in case anything leaks. Stand bottles up. Put a strip of cling film under the cap of any pump bottle to stop the pump being pressed in transit. Towels and bath mats fill the gaps in tea chests around the rest of the house.
Pack a small “first wash” bag for everyone: toothbrush, toothpaste, hand soap, shower gel, a flannel and a clean towel. The bag goes in your own car. Two minutes the night before means a clean shower the first morning.
If you are renting, leave a clean bathroom. The end-of-tenancy clean is what you get judged on, and a quick wipe-down of the suite and a swept floor stops most deposit disputes before they start.
How to Pack the Loft, Garage and Garden Items
These three spaces are where most moves run out of time, because they are full of the things you stopped using years ago and never sorted.
Start the loft six weeks out, not the week of the move. A 1930s semi loft in Houghton Regis or a Victorian terrace loft in Luton holds a startling amount once you actually look. Lay a torch and a board across the joists, climb up with two boxes, one for keep and one for charity, and work along the joists in strips. Anything you have not touched since the last move is a strong candidate for charity or the household waste site.
The garage gets the same treatment. Power tools go in their original cases if you still have them, otherwise wrap each one in bubble wrap and bag the chargers and bits in a labelled freezer bag taped to the case. Hand tools go in a sturdy plastic box, not a cardboard one. Garden chemicals, fuel and gas bottles do not travel on a removals lorry by law. Use them up, take them to the tip, or hand them to a neighbour.
Garden items split into three groups. Pots and planters travel empty, with the soil bagged separately if you want to take it. Garden furniture dismantles in most cases and stacks flat. The lawnmower and any petrol tools must be drained of fuel before they go on the lorry. Petrol fumes are the most common reason a load gets refused on the day.
Label every loft, garage and garden box with the destination at the property you are moving into, even if that is “garage” or “shed”. If it is going into a storage unit during the move, label that too. Our units at the Houghton Regis depot are individually alarmed, available in various sizes, with 24-hour access and rental priced by cubic feet, which is the option most customers pick when a sale completes faster than a purchase.
Labelling Tips to Make Unpacking Easier
A box without a label is a box you will open three times before you find what you want. Labels cost almost nothing and save more time on the day than any other packing habit.
Label every box on two sides and the top, never the bottom. Boxes are stacked, so the top and sides are the only faces you see in the lorry and the hallway. Use a thick permanent marker, not a biro, which fades when the box gets damp.
Write three things on every box: the destination room, a one-line note on the contents, and a priority number from one to three. One is open first, the kettle and the bedding. Two is open within the first weekend, everyday clothes and crockery. Three is open when you have time, books, photos, decorations and the loft.
A colour code helps if you have time. A roll of coloured tape per room, applied as a stripe across the top of the box, lets the crew sort at a glance. Red for the kitchen, blue for the master bedroom, green for the spare room. A4 sheets of the same colour taped to each door at the new house turn the whole unload into a matching exercise the crew can do in half the time.
Keep an inventory sheet on a clipboard at the door. Number each box as it leaves the old house, and tick it off as it lands at the new one. If a number is missing at the end, you know exactly which box has not arrived rather than discovering it three weeks later when you cannot find the wedding album.
If this guide has confirmed you would rather hand the packing to a crew that has done it thousands of times, request a survey visit and a tailored quote or get in touch with the team. Pair it with our ultimate moving house checklist for the week-by-week timeline, and our guide on what happens on moving day for the day itself.
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FAQ’s
Six weeks before the move is the sweet spot. Start with the loft, garage and any spare bedrooms in week six, work through the rest of the bedrooms and the living room in weeks four and three, and leave the kitchen and bathroom for the final week. If your completion date moves earlier at short notice, call us and we can usually fit a packing crew in within a few days.
Yes. We supply book boxes, tea chests, bubble wrap, tape and labels to anyone who books a move with us. The order goes in around four weeks before the move so you have everything for the active packing window. Standalone material orders are available too. Ask the team when you book.
No. Our packing service runs from a breakables-only option, where we wrap and box the kitchen and glassware while you handle the rest, up to a full pack and unpack with material disposal at the other end. Many customers in Houghton Regis, Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard book the breakables option a week before the move. The full service is the right call if you are short on time or moving with young children.
Every box gets the destination room at the property you are moving into, a one-line note on the contents, and a priority number from one to three. Labels go on two sides and the top, never the bottom. We mark fragile boxes with a red sticker so the crew can spot them on the lorry without rereading every label.
We do not recommend it. A full kitchen takes a trained crew between four and six hours to pack properly, and rushing the wrap on glasses and crockery is the most common cause of breakages. Book a kitchen pack the day before the move at the latest, ideally two days before for anything larger than a starter home.
The fastest route for most customers is a charity shop run for anything in good condition, the household waste recycling centre for bulky items, and a local selling site for anything in between. We also offer clearance and certified disposal as a separate booking, and can advise on the day if you have something you are not sure about.