How to tell a well-made moving box before you fill it

Moving boxes are chosen empty. At the supermarket, in a DIY shop, in the entrance hall where a neighbour left them: you look at them, they seem fine, you take as many as you need. Empty, they all look alike. The differences show up later, when the box is full, you lift it off the floor, carry it down two flights of stairs and then put three more on top of it.

By then, changing it has a cost: you have to empty it, find another one and do the job again. That is why the tests come first, with the box still empty in your hands. There are four, and none of them needs tools.

The bottom: what holds it shut

All the weight of a full box rests on the bottom, and the first question is a simple one: what holds it shut?

Turn the box over and look. If the bottom is made of flaps folded over each other, what holds them together is tape, and the strength of the bottom becomes the strength of the tape you put on it. How much you use and how you use it both matter: a single strip along the centre seam keeps the flaps together, but it does not hold them up. Anyone who assembles boxes for a whole move soon learns to tape a cross, one strip along the seam and one across it, and to go over the edges.

Then the hand test. With the box assembled and standing up, press the bottom from the inside with your palm flat. If it gives under your hand, it will give under the plates too. That is something to find out in the kitchen, not on the landing.

A Cangubox is rigid polypropylene and needs no tape to close: the bottom has no flaps to fold, and there is nothing to reinforce before you fill it.

The handholds: where your hands go

A box is carried by hand, and the second test is working out where your hands go. Lift it empty the way you would lift it full.

If it has two holes or two handles on the sides, your fingers go into the holes and you take the weight from there. If it has nothing, you lift it from underneath, with your hands flat under the bottom and your arms stretched out in front. That way, though, the box hides your feet, and on the stairs the steps are exactly what you need to see.

Look at how the handholds are made, too. If they are a hole cut into the side, run a finger along the edge and feel how thick it is: with the box loaded, all the weight rests there, on your fingers and on that edge.

The Cangubox measures 60 × 40 × 36 cm on the outside and has two handles set into its short sides: your hands go into the side of the box, not under it.

The lid: whether you can put something on top

In a move, boxes are never on their own. They sit in stacks: in the room while you fill them, in the van, in the hallway of the new home. The third test is to look at the top and ask whether another full box can sit on it.

Close the empty box and press your palm on the middle of the lid. If the lid is made of flaps, like the bottom, what you feel is how well it will hold when there is nothing underneath to support it. With the box full, the answer depends on how much you put in: if the contents reach the rim, the lid rests on them; if there is a gap, the weight of the box above will find it.

This gives you a rule if you have different kinds of boxes. The ones with a lid that gives go at the top of the stack, not at the bottom. And for the same reason, the half-filled ones do not go underneath.

The Cangubox lid is split into two halves, each hinged along one long side: you lower them, they lock into each other, and the top is flat. The product sheet lists it as stackable even when closed and loaded. The heaviest ones still go at the bottom, and the stack stays low enough for you to take it down without effort.

How much it takes, and who says so

The last test is not done with your hands: you read it. Look on the box, on the packaging or on the shop's product sheet for a stated maximum weight. If there is one, you know where to stop. If there is not, the load is your own guess, and you usually make that guess on moving day, as you lift.

For the Cangubox the number is there: 30 kg per box, a figure from the supplier. It is a limit, not a target, because thirty kilos is a lot for anyone to carry in their arms.

With used boxes there is one more question: what kind of life they have had. The ones picked up from the back of a shop have already made at least one trip. Smell them, check the corners and the bottom: a damp stain or a crushed corner is easy to see, and you notice a musty smell straight away. Cardboard cannot be washed, so what you smell now is what your clothes will carry with them.

Every Cangubox is checked and washed when it comes back, before it goes out again, and damaged ones are not put back into circulation.

Before you buy or collect your boxes, take one and do the four tests: turn over the bottom, lift it by the handholds, press the lid, look for the stated weight. It takes two minutes. The boxes that pass are the ones to count, and how many you need comes from a room-by-room count. The Cangubox kits and rental periods are in the price list.