Packing in a studio flat: where to keep the boxes while you fill them

You have one room, a kitchenette and a bathroom. On the first evening you fill three boxes and leave them wherever there is space, next to the bed. On the second evening you fill four more, and to get to the bathroom you have to walk round them. By the end of the week you are eating on the bed, because the roll of paper is on the table and you can no longer walk across the floor.

In a studio flat the problem is not how much you own. It is that the boxes and your daily life compete for the same floor, for weeks. So before you fill the first box, decide where all the others will go.

One wall for the full boxes

Pick one wall and give it a job: the full boxes go there, and nowhere else. Not the wall with the window you open every morning, not the one in front of the wardrobe you still take clothes from, not the one along the path from the bed to the door. It is usually the shortest wall, or the one behind the sofa, if you can move the sofa half a metre.

Then measure it. Take some masking tape and mark a rectangle of 60 by 40 centimetres on the floor, which is the footprint of a Cangubox, and see how many fit along that wall. That is the space you have, and you want to find that out on the first evening, not the third.

In a small room the boxes have to go up, not spread out. But a stack only holds if every box is closed and has a lid you can rest the next one on. A closed Cangubox can be stacked even when it is full, because its lid is flat. The lid closes by locking the two halves together, with no tape, so the box you have just finished goes straight onto the stack instead of sitting open on the floor waiting for the tape. The heaviest boxes, books and plates, go underneath, and the stack stops at a height you can still manage without help.

The Cangubox measures 60 × 40 × 36 cm overall and carries up to 30 kg. If you don't know yet how many you need, the estimate for a studio flat is the place to start.

Empty boxes take up space too

People always think about where to put the full boxes, and hardly ever about the ones waiting to be filled. A box that is ready to use takes up the same space empty or full, and twenty ready boxes take up the floor of twenty full ones.

The rule is to keep out only the ones for this evening. Two or three, the ones you expect to fill before bed. The others stay closed somewhere you don't use: under the bed if they fit, against the bathroom wall, on the balcony if it is covered.

When empty, Cangubox slot into one another if you leave the flaps open: that way the boxes you have not used yet form a low pile instead of covering the floor. You take one out, fill it, close it and carry it to the wall for the full ones. The stack of empties goes down, the stack of full boxes goes up, and the space to walk stays the same.

The order for clearing a one-room home

In a big home you pack one room at a time. In a studio flat there is only one room, so you pack by height and by use.

• First, what you can't see. On top of the wardrobe, under the bed, the back of the wall cupboards, the suitcase with the other season's things. Clearing those spots also frees up places to put the empty boxes.
• Then, what you don't use. Books, ornaments, picture frames, the clothes you won't wear before the move. These are also the things that go at the bottom of the stack.
• Last, what you use every day. The kitchen comes down to one plate, one glass and one mug each, plus one pan. The bathroom stays as it is until the last morning.

Keep one work surface clear at all times, the table or a kitchen worktop, and use it only for wrapping and filling. When you finish for the evening, clear it, and the next day you eat on it. If you are not sure whether to take something, don't stand holding it in front of the box: put it aside and decide at the weekend, along with everything you are leaving behind.

The last few days: a clear path from the bed to the door

In the last three or four days the wall of boxes is full and the room gets tighter. At that point there is only one thing to protect: the path from the bed to the door and from the bed to the bathroom. You will get up at night in the dark, and a box left there for one evening is the one you trip over.

The evening before the move, set aside one box or a rucksack with what you need for the first night in your new home: chargers, toothbrush, a change of clothes, the sheets. It goes by the door, away from the others, so it doesn't end up on the van in the middle of the stack.

On loading day the wall of boxes is the first thing to empty. Every rental includes the Dolly, a trolley with a platform: you load the Cangubox onto it and wheel them to the lift or the main door of the building, so you don't carry every box by hand.

Tonight, before you fill anything, get the masking tape. Choose the wall, mark the rectangles, count how many fit. Then clear the table and decide which three boxes you will fill tomorrow evening.