Moving guides are all about sequence — label the boxes, do one room at a time, keep the screws in a bag taped to the furniture. Good advice, all of it. But none of it works until you own the boxes, the labels, the tape and the bag, and that shopping trip is the one nobody plans.
Here is the buying list, in the order the buying actually matters.
Three weeks out
- Boxes. More than you estimated, in two or three sizes. Small boxes for books, large ones for bedding. A large box full of books cannot be lifted
- Packing tape and a tape gun. The gun is not a luxury; taping fifty boxes by hand is how you lose an afternoon
- Markers, thick, several — they vanish
- Bubble wrap or packing paper. Newspaper leaves ink on dishes
- Wardrobe boxes, if you own hanging clothes and value your sanity
One week out
- Furniture sliders and a set of moving straps. Both are cheap and both prevent an injury
- A hand truck, rented or bought
- Mattress bag — a mattress dragged through a doorway is a mattress you can see the doorway on
- Sandwich bags for screws and hardware, and tape to attach them to the thing they came from
- Stretch wrap for drawers you would rather not empty
- Floor protection if you are getting a security deposit back
The day-one box
The single highest-value thing on this list. One box, clearly labeled, that goes in the car rather than the truck, containing everything you need before you have found anything.
- Toilet paper, hand soap, a towel
- Coffee maker or kettle, mugs, coffee, a spoon
- Phone chargers
- Trash bags
- Basic tools — screwdriver, scissors, a utility knife
- Cleaning spray, cloths, a roll of paper towels
- Pain reliever and bandages
- Bedding for the first night, so that going to bed is not a project
After the truck leaves
- Light bulbs — check the fittings in the new place
- Batteries for smoke alarms
- Extension cords, because the outlets are in different places now
- Curtain hardware, picture hooks, command strips
- New locks or a lock change, if you are buying
- Doormat, trash can, cleaning kit for the place you left
Share it or you will buy tape twice
Moving is a group activity with a single point of knowledge, which is a bad design. The person who knows what has been bought is carrying it in their head, so somebody buys a second tape gun and nobody buys the mattress bag.
Building it as a link list fixes the coordination without a spreadsheet. On MakerManifest each item comes from a product page, so anyone helping can see exactly which sliders, which boxes, which size — and buy the right one, or check it off with you. Use the item note for status: "bought", "Dad is bringing these", "need 20, have 8".
Publish it, send the link, and everyone helping is looking at the same page. No accounts, no app — it opens in a browser.
A free account gives 10 lists of 25 items, which is a natural fit here: one list for packing supplies, one for the day-one box, one for the new-place purchases. Splitting it by phase is better than one long list anyway, because you shop it in phases.
Buy the boxes early
If you take one thing from this: buy the boxes and tape three weeks out, not the weekend before. Everything else on the list is recoverable. Packing with no boxes is not.
Start your moving list — free, and shareable with whoever is helping.