Where to find boxes for a move: three routes and what each one asks of you

Boxes are the first thing you need and the last thing you think about. Until you have one at home you cannot start packing, and when you go looking for them you find that you need a lot, all at once, and ideally before the weekend you had set aside for the bookcase.

There are three routes: collect them, buy them, rent them. Each one has a cost that is not on the receipt, made up of the trips, the work before you fill them and the work after you empty them. Before choosing, three questions.

Three questions before you look for them

How many, and by when. You get the number by counting your home shelf by shelf, and there is a room-by-room method that stops you running out halfway. The date is set by the day you start filling them: from then on, every missing box stops the work.

All the same size or not. Boxes never travel one at a time: while you fill them they stand in stacks in the room, then in the van, then in the hall of the new home. With boxes that are all the same, you build the stack without thinking. With different sizes you have to plan it every time, big ones at the bottom and small ones on top, and the leftovers end up on the floor.

What you do with them afterwards. On the day you empty the last box, the others are still there. They need to be folded and kept somewhere, given to someone or taken away. At the start this feels like a distant question, and it comes back in the first week in the new home.

Collected from shops or from someone who has just moved

This is the first route people think of. The supermarket downstairs, the greengrocer, the chemist, the neighbour who has just moved and has a hallway full of them.

What it asks of you: time and trips. A shop gives you the boxes it has that day, not the ones you need, so reaching the right number means going back several times, and each time carrying them home by hand or by car. They come in different sizes, some open at the top like fruit crates, others printed with the brand of a detergent or a mineral water.

And they have already made at least one journey. Before you take them home, look at them one by one: the bottom, the corners, the smell. These are the four checks to do with the empty box in your hands, and with collected boxes they matter even more than with the others.

After the move they need to be folded and disposed of, or passed on to someone else who is about to move.

Bought new

You can find them in DIY shops and online. If you have already asked a removal company for a quote, ask whether boxes are included and what kind they are, before you buy more.

What it asks of you: they arrive flat and need to be put together. Each one is opened out, the bottom flaps are folded and it is closed with tape, usually in two crossed strips, and the tape has to be bought separately along with everything else. If you buy a single model, the sizes are all the same, and that answers the second question.

The boxes you buy stay yours. The day after the move they need to be emptied, folded and taken to the paper bin or to the recycling centre, depending on how many there are and how collection works where you live. If you keep them for next time, they wait in the cellar.

Rented, and delivered to your door

The third route is never owning them at all. Cangubox are rigid polypropylene crates: they arrive ready, there is nothing to put together, and the lid is made of two hinged flaps that close by locking together, with no tape.

On the three questions, the answer is this. You choose the kit when you book, and the boxes arrive all together, at the address you are moving from. If you prefer, you can pick them up yourself at the CanguPoint, just outside Milan. There is only one size, 60 × 40 × 36 cm, and the specification lists them as stackable even closed and loaded. The rental also includes the Dolly: a trolley on wheels, you stack the crates on it and push them instead of lifting them one by one.

Here, what happens afterwards works differently. Cangubox can be collected directly from your new home, and while they wait for collection you just open the flaps of the empty crates and they fit one inside the other, in a low stack. On return each crate is checked and washed, and a damaged one stays out of circulation.

Kits and rental periods are on the price list.

Before you decide, count your boxes and write down the date you start filling them. Then take the three routes and ask, for each one, how many trips it costs you to have them at home by that day, how many will be the same size and where they will end up the week after. The right route is the one that leaves you free to pack, and the choice needs to be made before you open the first drawer.