Packing for a move when you work full time

You leave the office at half past six, you get home at half past seven, and after dinner it is nine. On paper you have two hours an evening, five evenings a week. In practice you sit down in front of the wardrobe, pick up a jumper you have not worn for three winters, and cannot decide whether to keep it. You put it back where it was and go to bed.

The trouble when you work all day is not time. It is that time comes in pieces, and nearly all the pieces come when your head is already tired. You can find the hours. What needs to change is what you put into them.

Each part of the week has its own job

Packing means doing two different jobs. One is deciding: what goes, what stays, which room it ends up in. The other is repeating the same movements: wrapping, filling, closing, stacking. The first wears out your head, the second only your hands.

So split them by time of day.

• Saturday and Sunday mornings, the choices. You are rested and you have whole hours. Go round one room at a time and decide on everything in it, including what you are not taking. When you have finished, you know for each shelf what goes and what stays.
• Evenings, the movements. Only pack what you already decided at the weekend. A shelf you have already made up your mind about can be emptied even at ten at night, because it asks you no questions.
• Lunch breaks, the phone calls. Utilities, the building manager, the parking permit for the van: the people who answer often work the same hours as you. One call a day, and your evening stays free for the boxes.
• Mornings, nothing. A box you open at eight, before rushing out, stays on the floor until the evening.

Evenings: a fixed length and a rule for stopping

Before you start, decide how long it lasts, for example an hour, and when the hour is up, stop. Knowing there is an end helps you start, and after a day at work the hard part is starting.

There is just one rule for stopping: you never leave a box half full. Close the one in your hands, note on your phone what is inside and which room it goes to, then switch off the light. A half-full box is a decision put off: the next evening you no longer remember what you put in it, and you start rummaging again.

Before going to bed, set up the next evening. Leave the paper, the empty container and the shelf you have already chosen on the table. That way you come home tomorrow and you do not even have to decide where to begin.

Not sure how many evenings you need in total? Try measuring your own pace over a real half hour, then count the evenings you actually have, not the ones you would like.

One thing weighs on the evenings of anyone who works, and hardly anyone counts it in advance: the time that goes by before you fill anything. A cardboard box, before anything goes into it, has to be opened, folded and taped on the bottom, and once full it has to be taped again on top. You repeat them for every single box, and they eat into that hour. A Cangubox arrives assembled and ready to fill. The lid is attached to the crate, in two halves on hinges, and you close it by locking one half into the other, without tape. The whole evening hour goes into filling.

The flat has to stay liveable

While you pack, you still live there, and every morning you have to leave dressed and on time. The order depends on that.

Start with the rooms you do not use during the week: the spare room, the study, the cellar. In the rooms you do use, start high up and at the back: the shelves you cannot reach without a stool, the back of the wardrobe, the clothes for the other season. Your work clothes, the coffee machine and what you need in the bathroom stay out until the last few days.

Then think about where the full boxes end up. Choose a single corner, away from the hallway you walk through in the morning, and stack them there. Cangubox sit one on top of another even when closed and full: put the ones with books and crockery underneath, and the clutter grows upwards instead of spreading across the floor. The ones still empty, with the flaps open, fit one inside the other, so the ones waiting to be filled sit in a low pile and not in the middle of the room.

The dates that depend on when you are home

With a full-time job, the real question about every delivery is: who is at home when it arrives? Ask it for every date, before you fix it.

You need the boxes from the first weekend you start choosing, not from the week of the van, and the delivery date is chosen from there. If you would rather collect them yourself, at the CanguPoint we agree the time with you after you book. The same goes at the end: for collection from your home we agree a time slot and let you know before we come round, so pick a day when you are in. What each rental includes is in the kit.

The day of the van, by contrast, is the one worth taking a day off for. Evenings are enough for filling, but not for loading.

Tonight, take the calendar for the next few weeks. Next to each weekend write which rooms you will decide on, next to the evenings which shelves you will fill, next to the lunch breaks which call you will make. Then start on the first Saturday, not tonight.