Packing Services
West Valley City

Materials are the part of a move where people economise first, and it is mostly the right instinct. There are a few specific places where it goes wrong, and they are worth knowing before you start collecting.

Just-In-Time Moving packs homes across West Valley City and Salt Lake County.

Free boxes that work

Retail is the reliable source. Anywhere that receives stock in cartons has a compaction problem and is frequently glad to hand boxes over if you ask at the right time, which is usually early morning after a delivery.

What you want is boxes that are square, unwaxed, undamaged and of a consistent size. Consistency matters more than people expect, because uniform boxes stack squarely into a truck and mismatched ones leave gaps, and gaps are what cause a load to shift.

Bookshops and off-licences are worth asking specifically. Book boxes are small and strong, which is exactly what heavy items need, and wine boxes with dividers are the best glass packing you will get for nothing.

Free boxes that are a false economy

Produce boxes. Often waxed, frequently damp, sometimes not fully enclosed, and a magnet for insects. Avoid.

Anything that has held food. Same reason, and it is not worth discovering in a storage unit three months later.

Boxes that have already moved house. Cardboard fatigues. A box on its third move has lost much of its strength and it is the one that fails at the bottom while somebody is carrying it down stairs.

Oversized boxes of any kind. Large boxes look efficient and get filled with heavy things, and then cannot be lifted safely or stacked without crushing.

Where not to economise at all

Tape. Cheap tape does not stick to cardboard reliably, particularly in cold, and a blown-out box bottom is the single most common packing failure. Buy proper packing tape and use several strips across the seam.

Boxes for anything fragile. Glass, china and electronics want new boxes of known strength. This is a small part of a household and where nearly all breakage happens.

Wrapping material. Newspaper marks china and light-coloured fabric. Plain paper is inexpensive and does not.

The bigger saving

None of this compares to moving less. Clearing the garage weeks ahead saves more than every box you could source for nothing, because anything unwanted costs three times: packing it, transporting it, and disposing of it from the new house.

If you want the fragile rooms handled and the rest done yourself, that is the common arrangement and usually the sensible one. The estimate is free and comes in writing.

Call (435) 862-3080 or email office@movingjustintime.com.