Professional Packing Services – Benefits, Costs, and Tips

When you want something to be done as perfectly as possible, you’ll most probably have it done professionally. You will be right to do so, because professionalism is synonymous with efficiency, skill, and experience – and that is exactly what you need in order to ensure the success of your endeavors.

This is all the more true in the event of moving house when competence and expertise can mean the difference between a smooth relocation and a moving disaster. It is hardly surprising, then, that most people choose to trust the experts and hire professional movers to help them relocate in a safe and efficient manner.

But what about packing for the move? It is the most laborious, time-consuming, and nerve-wracking task of the entire relocation process, yet most people believe that they will have no problems packing their belongings for moving (after all, everyone has packed items before – for travel, for college, etc., without encountering any major difficulties).

This illusion, however, is shattered the moment they face the enormous amount of fragile, oddly-shaped, and highly valuable items that need to be safely packed for transportation. Such a colossal, risky job is better left to the professionals.

So, if you’re about to move house anytime soon, you may want to consider professional packing help. Moving packers have the rich experience and expert know-how required to ensure the safety of your cherished possessions and the successful outcome of your relocation adventure. You’re certain to find their services highly effective and beneficial in more than one way.

When Do You Need Professional Packing Services?

It’s quite possible that you may be able to pack your belongings well enough to survive the trip to your new home without any risk of damage:

• If you have previous experience packing for moving;
• If you have the time and the patience to pack every single item with utmost care and attention;
• If you have quality packing materials and some reliable packing help from family or friends;
• If you’re relocating only a few easy-to-pack items, such as clothes and books, and no heavy furniture, large household appliances, or fragile objects;
• If you’re moving short distance and the atmospheric conditions at the time of your move pose no significant threat to your more delicate belongings.

If all (or most of) these conditions are met, your own packing skills will be probably enough to ensure the safety of your goods.

In all other circumstances, however, professional packing is your best bet:

• If you’re moving long distance, your items will be on the road for a long time – there will be many stops along the way, the shipment may be exposed to adverse weather conditions, etc. Your items need to be packed as safely as possible – perfectly immobilized inside the moving boxes and well protected from moisture, extreme temperatures, and shocks and vibrations during the transportation – in order to survive the long trip across the country intact and unscathed;
• If you’re moving on a short notice and don’t have enough time to pack your entire home by yourself;
• If you have too many items to relocate and just don’t have the time to pack each and every one of them carefully and safely enough;
• If you’re moving difficult-to-pack items – ones that are very fragile (such as fine china or crystal glasses, for example), or very delicate (artwork, musical instruments, etc.), or very expensive (electronics), or very large (household appliances), or very heavy (furniture), or very awkwardly-shaped (grandfather clocks, pieces of art, etc.), or extremely valuable (antiques, collectibles, family heirlooms, etc.). Such items should be left to professional packers, even if you prefer to pack the rest of your belongings yourself;
• If you don’t have previous packing experience and aren’t sure how to provide good protection to your belongings;
• If you’re not up to the challenge and want to be relieved of the enormous stress related to the arduous packing process.

These are all good reasons to hire professional packers – you will avoid unnecessary risks, will save yourself plenty of time and effort, and will rest assured about the safety of your belongings as they will be packed in the best way possible.

SEE ALSO: Self Packing vs Full Packing Services

How Do Professional Packers Pack?

So, what do professional packers do to facilitate your move and ensure your peace of mind?

Professional household packers provide quality packing and unpacking services to help you move out in a fast and organized manner, avoid moving accidents, prevent damage to your belongings, and set up your new home as quickly and easily as possible.

1. Professional packers for moving work in a quick and systematic manner. They have the technical know-how to organize and pack household items and personal possessions with enviable speed and efficiency (one professional packer can pack about 5-6 standard moving boxes in an hour).

2. Home packers and movers use proven packing strategies and clever tricks that result in optimum efficiency and space utilization. They can pack about twice as much stuff in a box as an inexperienced home mover would.

3. The packing experts are well aware of the common problems and potential risks that may occur during the moving process, so they can take the necessary measures to prevent damages to your belongings.

The specialists provide the best possible protection to the items they pack for moving (appropriate wrapping that keeps moisture, dust, and dirt away from the goods, sufficient cushioning that prevents shifting inside the boxes and absorbs shocks and vibration during the transportation, protective layers that don’t allow the objects to come in contact with each other, etc.) and ensure their maximum safety during transit.

4. Professional packers and movers use quality packing materials (brand new moving boxes, quality packing paper and packing tape, plenty of bubble wrap and Styrofoam peanuts, etc.) that provide much better protection than improvised or previously used packing supplies.

5. The pros provide a variety of specialized packing services:

• Custom crating services – if you have very valuable and very delicate items for moving (artwork, antiques, crystal items, etc.), the experts can make custom wooden crates that perfectly fit the articles and provide them with ultimate protection during the move;
• Furniture disassembly – if some of your larger furniture pieces don’t fit through the doors and need to be disassembled before the move, the pros can do the job for you – they have the necessary tools, technical know-how, and rich experience to safely and quickly dismantle your furniture (and reassemble the pieces after the move, if you wish so);
• Packing of specialty items – if you’re moving a piano, a pool table, a grandfather clock, or any other specialty items that require specialized packing materials and specialized packing techniques in order to survive the move intact and unscathed, the experts can take proper care of your valuable pieces.

Good to know: Depending on your needs and preferences, you can use complete packing services (if you want the pros to pack your entire house and prepare all your items for shipping) or partial packing services (if you want the pros to take care only of some difficult-to-pack items – fragile items, specialty items, high-value items, etc. – and intend to pack the rest of your belongings yourself).

To put it in a nutshell, when using professional packing services, your hired packers will come to your home at the pre-agreed date and time, pack smaller items in sturdy moving boxes, wrap furniture pieces in moving blankets (and disassemble larger furniture, if required), prepare household appliances for shipping, take everything out of your home in a safe and quick manner, load your goods onto the moving truck, and secure them for the transportation.

Upon your request, the packing team (the same people or a different team, depending on the distance of your move) will unload your items, take them to their rightful places in your new home, unpack them, reassemble furniture, and dispose of the packing materials.

Full service packing and moving will make your relocation endeavor much simpler, easier and, most importantly, trouble-, hassle- and stress-free.

Benefits of Using Professional Packing Services

Hiring professional packers for moving house will relieve you of all the responsibilities and stress related to the nerve-wracking packing process. The experts will guarantee:

Maximum speed and efficiency

As already mentioned, professional moving packers have developed effective packing strategies that allow them to pack an entire household – no matter how big it may be – within several hours. The pros will get the job done before you know it.

What’s more, the expert skills and extensive experience acquired by the professionals in the course of their training and work help them organize household belongings in the best possible way and use the optimal capacity of the moving containers.

Utmost safety

Qualified packers have the skill, knowledge, and experience required to ensure the safety of household items during transit and the specialized packing supplies necessary to provide the best possible protection to each and every article.

The combination of proper packing techniques with proper packing supplies guarantees the excellent condition of the professionally packed goods throughout the moving process.

In addition to keeping the customers’ items safe and intact, the pros take effective precautionary measures to prevent property damage and personal injuries in the course of the relocation endeavor as well.

Specialized packing services

Professional packers know how to handle difficult-to-pack items and provide them with adequate protection – as already detailed above, they can disassemble furniture, build custom crates to guarantee the safety of extremely valuable articles, protect the delicate mechanisms of sensitive items, such as pianos, grandfather clocks, electronics, etc.

You can rely on the pros to come up with efficient solutions in any situation.

Moving insurance

If you hire professional packers and movers for your relocation, they will accept liability if any of your belongings get lost or damaged while in their custody. And nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than proper insurance, as you know.

No hassle and efforts on your part

When you use packing and moving services, the experts will do all the tedious, laborious work for you – you won’t have to go looking for adequate packing supplies, spend endless hours wrapping household items and arranging them in boxes, wonder what to do with fragile objects and large furniture or appliances, worry about possible packing mistakes or risk damaging your cherished possessions or getting injured in the strenuous packing process.

Instead, you’ll have the time to take care of other pressing matters and say your goodbyes to dear friends and favorite places – calm and assured that your belongings are in good hands.

Hiring professional packing services will reduce both the stress and the risks involved in the moving process. Yet, it will cost you – the only drawback of using home packing services is that you will have to pay for them and that will increase the overall cost of your move. You can find more details on how much professional packers cost below.

What to Know When Hiring Professional Packers

When consider hiring professional packers for your forthcoming relocation, you need to know the answers of several important questions so you can make an informed decision:

How Much Does It Cost to Hire Professional Packers?

There is no doubt that using professional house packing services is the best way to ensure optimal packing care for your household items, but before you decide on hiring packers for moving you need to be sure that you’ll be able to afford their services.

How much do professional packers charge? The cost of packing depends on several factors – the number and type of items you have for packing, the required specialized services, the time it takes to complete the packing job, etc. In general:

• The average cost of packing a 2-bedroom home for a long distance move is estimated to be about $600-$800 (cost of packing labor and packing materials included);
• When it comes to local moves, the average price to hire packers is about $50-$60 per hour per packer.

For more sample costs and in-depth analyses of the price factors take a look at our comprehensive guide How much does it cost to hire packers.

You can use some clever tactics to reduce the packing cost, of course, but using professional packing help will still add about 20% to the final cost of your move. Finding all your belongings safe and intact upon arrival, however, will be worth every penny you spent (not to mention all the time and hassle that the pros will save you during the relocation process).

Having considered the pros and cons of professional packing, you can make the right choice for your next move. And if you decide to use professional help, you’ll be interested to know how to find the best packers for you, what to expect from them, and how to make the most of their services.

How to Find Experienced Professional Packers

If you’re going to entrust your belongings to packers, you need to find experienced and reliable professionals to work it.

Fortunately, that’s an easy task – full service moving includes packing, many reputable movers offer packing as an additional service, moving labor can provide packing assistance, etc. You can choose the option that best suits your needs and get quality packing services at an affordable price.

All you need to do is:

• Fill in a free moving quote form to get in touch with several top-rated moving companies in your area;
  
• Check the movers’ reputation – read customer reviews, browse through the companies’ websites, check their ratings with the BBB, etc.;
• Request an in-house price estimate from three or four affordable, trustworthy movers. Show them the items you want to be professionally packed and discuss the details (necessary packing supplies, required specialized services, time to complete the job, etc.);
• Compare the received quotes and carefully research the company you consider hiring for your move.

Now that you know the answer to the bothersome question “How to find reliable packing services near me?”, you can hire the best packers for you and rest assured that your items are in good hands. There is just one more thing to do before moving day arrives – get ready for the pros.

How to Prepare for Professional Packers

The better prepared you are when your hired packers arrive on move day, the quicker, safer and more efficient the packing process will be. So, before the packers show up, make sure you:

1) Sort out your possessions and get rid of unwanted items

Unless you throw out, donate, or sell the items you’re not going to need anymore, the packers will just put them in moving boxes with the rest of your stuff. They have no way of knowing what you want to take to your new home and what you want to leave behind, so you need to purge your home before the move.

Otherwise, you’ll have to pay for the packing and relocation of unneeded items – the final moving cost is based on the weight of your shipment and the packing costs depend on the time it takes to prepare your belongings for transportation and the amount of packing materials used in the process, so the more items you have for packing and moving, the higher your moving costs will be.

2) Decide what you’re going to do with non-allowable items (the items your movers won’t load on the moving truck for safety reasons) – find efficient ways to transport the ones you want to take with you, dispose of hazardous substances, use up perishable food, etc.

3) Create a detailed moving inventory so you can keep better track of your possessions and have a proof of the condition of your items before the move.

4) Clean and organize your household items and personal belongings, so that they are ready to be packed when the packers arrive.

5) Mark high-value items as such, so that your packers and movers know that these articles need to be handled with extra care.

6) Pack an essentials box that contains all the items you’re going to need on the trip to your new place and in the first couple of days in your new home. Make sure it doesn’t get accidentally loaded on the moving truck.

7) Take everything you don’t want to be packed for moving to a separate room and lock it. Clearly mark larger items (such as appliances) that are to be left behind.

8) Ensure safe and easy access to your items and a safe route from the place where the moving truck is going to park to the entrance of your home. Take care of potential hazards, remove obstacles, sweep the pathways clean of fallen leaves and other debris, and keep children and pets away from the moving chaos.

9) Take adequate measures to prevent property damage.

10) Prepare some snacks and drinks for the professional packers to keep their energy up during the laborious packing process.

11) Get some cash ready to tip your packers if you’re happy with their work.

You can find more detailed information on how to prepare for professional movers and packers here.

Hiring professional packing services will help you achieve a perfect move – that’s what professionals are for, you know.