Buying plastic crates for a move or renting them: what happens afterwards

You have decided you don't want cardboard. No boxes to fold into shape, no tape, no bottoms to reinforce. Plastic crates are sold in DIY shops and on homeware websites, and buying them looks like the simplest route: you pay once, they are yours, and on moving day they are there.

But moving day is only one day. Crates you buy are still there the week after, when they are empty, and the month after, when you are looking for somewhere to put them. The choice between buying and renting is decided almost entirely in that afterwards, which is the part people think about last.

Before you buy: three things to check on the crate

If you decide to buy, pick one up in the shop, or read the whole product page if you order online. Three things matter on moving day, and they matter afterwards too.

How it closes. If the lid is a separate piece, every crate has two parts to keep together, during the move and for years after. If the lid is hinged to the crate, it travels and gets put away with it.

Whether it fits inside another when empty. This is the question that decides how much space they will take up afterwards. A crate that does not slot into another when empty takes up the same space full or empty, and thirty of them stacked up make a wall. If they do fit inside each other, the stack stays low.

How much it holds, written down somewhere. Look for a stated maximum weight, on the crate or on the seller's product page. The other tests, on the bottom, the handles and the lid, are in the article on how to tell a well-made moving box, and they work for plastic too.

And buy them all in the same model: while you pack, in the van and when you arrive, identical crates stack without you having to think about it.

The day after: where the empty crates go

You empty the last crate, and the others are already there, empty. So before you buy them, do one sum: how many there will be, and where they will live in your new home.

You get the number from the room-by-room count. You find the space by looking at your new home: is there a cellar, a storage cupboard, room on top of the wardrobes? A crate that does not fit inside another takes up, empty, the space it took up full. Measure that space before you buy, because afterwards the crates are already in the hallway.

Then there is cleaning. The crates have been up and down the stairs, in the van and across the floors of two homes. Before you put them away they need washing, and thirty crates get washed in the courtyard, on the balcony or in the bath, one at a time. Then they need to dry open, and that takes space too, in the days when there are still things to sort out all over your new home.

When you rent, this part of the work is ours. Once emptied, Cangubox open up and slot inside one another, and stay like that, in a short stack, until they are collected. They can be collected straight from your new home, and when they come back we check and wash every crate before it goes out again. By then, there are no crates left in your home to wash or put away.

How many you will really use afterwards

The usual reason for thinking of buying them is that they will come in handy again. Before you buy, write down the exact use for each one: the cellar to sort out, the holiday decorations, the toys scattered round the house, the summer shoes in the cold months.

The ones with a use written next to them are a purchase for the home, not for the move, and you count them separately. For all the others there are three routes left, and each one is work.

• Keep them for the next move. You need the space from the section above, for all the years until that day.
• Sell them. You need photos, a listing, replies to the people who message you and a time to meet whoever comes to pick them up.
• Give them away. You have to find someone who is moving in exactly those weeks, and who will come and pick them up.

Make this list before you buy, not after. On the day the crates are empty in the hallway you will make the list anyway, but by then you have already paid for all of them.

The count, before you choose

Count it in tasks, the way you do for everything else in a move. If you buy: choose the model, order them or go and get them, bring them home, fill them, empty them, wash them, let them dry, find the space, and then keep them, sell them or give them away. If you rent: choose the kit, have them delivered or pick them up at the CanguPoint, fill them, empty them, open the flaps, hand them back.

Then there is the Dolly, included in the rental: a wheeled trolley: you rest the stack of crates on it and push it along, without lifting them one by one. The product sheet states that Cangubox can be stacked even when closed and loaded, and there is only one size: 60 × 40 × 36 cm. Kits and durations are in the price list, and doubling the length of the rental does not double the price.

Before you buy the first crate, write two numbers on a sheet of paper: how many you need for the move, and how many you will use afterwards with an exact use next to them. Then mark where, in your new home, all the ones outside the second column will go. With those two numbers and that space in front of you, the choice takes a few minutes, and you make it before the crates are in your home.