Documenting a Pack: The Record That Protects You

Once a box is taped shut, nobody can tell what is inside it or how it was packed. That is obvious and its consequences are not, because most questions that arise after a move are questions about the inside of sealed boxes.

Just-In-Time Moving packs and moves homes across West Valley City and Salt Lake County. We are licensed in Utah and carry general liability insurance.

Number every box

The habit that does the most work for the least effort. As you seal a box, write a number on it, large, on two sides. Keep a list of the number, the destination room and roughly what is inside.

Not an itemised inventory. Enough to identify it: 34, kitchen, baking things and the mixer.

Ten seconds a box, and it gives you three things. You can find something during the weeks when everything is packed. You know at the far end whether every box arrived, which an unnumbered stack will never tell you. And if something is missing, you can say which box it was in.

Photograph the things that matter

Not everything. The items where value or condition could later be in question.

Anything valuable, before it goes into a box, showing its condition and any existing marks. Serial numbers on electronics. The backs of televisions and computers before they are unplugged, which doubles as a reconnection guide.

Anything already damaged or loose at the joints, which protects everybody. A piece that was loose before it moved can fail in transit without anybody handling it badly, and a photograph showing it was loose beforehand ends that conversation before it starts.

Why this matters more if you pack yourself

Where a moving company packs a box, they are accountable for how it was packed as well as how it was carried. Where you pack and seal it, nobody can establish what went in or how, which is why owner-packed boxes are commonly treated differently and often excluded.

That is not a trick; it is a genuine evidentiary problem that every mover has. Your numbering and photographs are the answer to it, and they are the difference between a claim you can make and one you cannot.

Keep the list somewhere sensible

On your phone and somewhere else, not on a sheet of paper that goes into box 41. This happens constantly.

Keep documents, jewellery, medication and anything irreplaceable with you rather than in any box, since those are excluded from cover essentially universally.

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