When your moving date is set, you need to ensure that all of your belongings are packed and ready to go on the day of the move. But how long does it take to pack a house? When should you start packing to make sure that all those moving boxes are ready to go on your moving date? In this article, we will look at everything, including what factors can affect that timescale.
That way, when you’re planning your move, you can make sure you’ve got all the time necessary.
What Factors Make A Difference In How Long It Takes To Pack A House?
Before we get onto the details of how long it takes to pack up different sizes of homes, it has to be mentioned that this is really very dependant on a number of things.
- How many people are packing
- How experienced these people are (professionals or friends/family)
- How many rooms you have
- How big each room is
- How cluttered each room is
- Will you be packing in one go (with full days involved), or in small sections of time (a few hours here and there over several weeks)?
All these have to be considered when estimating how long it’s going to take, and how soon you need to start packing.
For example – if you have a few full days to pack, then you will benefit from the speed of having everything out and doing it in one go. It will take a little longer to stop and start because you’ll have to get back up to speed.
Or if you’re cluttered but only have a 2 bedroom home, it could still take longer than a more minimal 6 bedroom home because it’s more about your stuff than the size of the house, to some extent.
Should you pack yourself, or use professional Movers?
This is a great question, and these questions will help you decide on the best way to go for your specific circumstances:
Have you got recommended packing companies to use? If you’ve got recommendations then this can make finding help a much easier process.
Have you got the time and energy to pack yourself? It can be really draining to pack yourself, and you have to be really organised because it often takes longer to pack if you do it yourself, so you need to be sure you don’t pack things you’ll need.
Are you OK to buy all the packing supplies you need, and then get rid of them when you unpack at the new house? Packing services will use their own, saving you the hassle.
Do you have the budget for help packing? If you can add this cost to your overall moving budget, it may well be worth the cost.
Do you have friends / family to help you pack? If you have a lot of stuff then help will be better than going it alone. If you don’t have help available (if they live far away, for example) then you may well be better off paying for help.
Do you want it done as quickly as possible? A professional packer, packing service, or moving company will pretty much be guaranteed to pack up a house more quickly than you can do it. If you value speed and efficiency then hiring it out would be the way to go.
Related: 7 Essential Packing Tips For Moving House To Make It Easier
How long does it take to pack a house For Professional Packers?
Professional movers will take a look at every part of your home before they quote for packing. This is because of all the dependancies involved (mostly how much stuff is in the space).
It’s important that they are as streamlined as they can be – and most professional moving companies will be able to pack an entire house between a couple of hours and a couple of days – depending on how much there is in the house, and the size of the house.
This speed is because they have the advantage of experience and will often also have access to a lot of staff to help.
But What If You Want To Pack Your Own Home When Moving?
Whatever your reasons for packing yourself, you’ll want to be able to estimate the time you’ll need to get it done.
Maybe you’ll need to book time off work, or you have to work around existing schedules, but it’s important to make sure you can achieve it all before moving day.
For the following examples and timescales, I will assume the following facts – as these will be the most common circumstances. If your specific needs are different, then you’ll want to increase or decrease the timings accordingly.
- 2 people packing
- All packing supplies bought and ready to use
- Plan for what to pack in what order has been decided
- Packing will be done over a few weeks in slots of a few hours at a time. This means estimated time to pack will be given in hours rather than days (because you may be able to do longer days or shorter days than some)
- You are packing everything you find in each room. If you’re decluttering you’ll have already done this. This is purely packing time.
How Long Does It Take To Pack A Room?
Each room in your home will have a different amount of things to pack. Some have more furniture that won’t be packed in boxes, and others will have lots of stuff that needs packing carefully.
As such you need to know what rooms your home has before you can realistically answer how long it will take to pack the entire house.
Here’s a list of rooms from the easiest (and quickest) to pack – to the hardest:
Bathroom – often it’s just toiletries and decor, as the furniture is all staying put. Around 1-2 hours to pack.
Hallway – less stuff in than most rooms. Around 2-4 hours to pack.
Living Rooms – usually a decent amount of furniture with less stuff – but more breakables that need careful packing – so packing would take around 3-5hrs
Bedrooms. As clothes are involved in bedrooms this is where the packing can start to be more. Also – kids room will have lots of stuff in them. Around 4-5hrs to pack
Home Office. Lots of paperwork and stationary – around 3-5hrs to pack.
Utility – Around 3-5hrs to pack
Kitchen. This is the biggest in terms of packing boxes, as there is just so much stuff involved. Around 4-7hrs to pack.
Loft / Basement – depending on how much you’ve got in there it could be really quick or really difficult. Around 3-8 hrs to pack.
Garage – could have a LOT of stuff to pack up. Around 4-10hrs to pack.
Based on all these assumptions – here are the timings to pack different sized homes:
How Long Does It Take To Pack Up A One Bedroom Home?
All rooms in a 1 bedroom property would be relatively small and straightforward to pack.
The usual rooms in this sized space would be Living Room (3hrs to pack), Kitchen (4hrs), Bathroom (1hr), Bedroom (4hrs). There may be some hallway space or outside space (2hrs).
Overall this would take 14hrs to pack altogether. That would be 2 days to get it all done in one go, or just under 3 hours a week for 5 weeks.
How Long Does It Take To Pack Up A 2 Bedroom House?
2 Bedroom homes are likely to have the following rooms in them: Hallway (2hrs), Living Room (3hrs), Kitchen (4hrs), Bathroom (1hr), 2 Bedrooms (4hrs per room), Garage (4hrs), Loft (3hrs).
All rooms will still be on the small-ish side for packing estimates. The total number of packing hours needed would be around 25 hours. This is 3 long days or 5 hours a week for 5 weeks.
PACKING TIP – It’s often less stressful to take one room at a time and work through the house systematically. That way you will be able to clearly see progress as you pack. Items that are in basements and lofts are not typically ones that are needed frequently, so it’s best to start packing these rooms first.
How Long Does It Take To Pack A 3 Bedroom House?
A 3 bedroom home commonly has the following rooms: Hallway (2hrs), Living Room (3hrs), Kitchen (5hrs), Another room (Utility or Home Office – 3hrs), Garage (5hrs), Loft (4hrs), 3 Bedrooms (12hrs), Bathroom (1hr).
This totals 35 hours of packing. You could do this in 3-5 days or 5 hours a week for 7 weeks.
PACKING TIP – I would advise that you keep an inventory of what is in each box and that you label boxes with which room they belong to. This will make it easier to unpack at the new house.
How long does it take To pack a 4 bedroom house?
A 4 bedroom home commonly has the following rooms: Hallway (3hrs), Living Room(s) (5hrs), Kitchen (6hrs), Utility (4hrs), Home Office (3hrs), Garage (6hrs), Loft (5hrs), 4 Bedrooms (16hrs), Bathroom(s) (2hr).
This totals 50 hours of packing. You could do this in 5-7 days or just over 7 hours a week for 7 weeks.
How long does it take to pack a 5+ bedroom house?
Any home of 5 bedrooms or more would usually have lots of different rooms, including kids spaces, and extras such as a large garage and loft, an extra living room, and possible even a gym or craft space.
As such I would estimate around 60 hours of packing would be required. That’s 6-9 days, or 8.5 hours a week for 7 weeks.
What Can Make Packing To Move Take Longer?
A few things will create longer packing times than the average – and so you need to take these into consideration when planning your packing schedule:
#1 – Packing delicate items will mean you have to be more careful wrapping things up. The last thing you want is to open a cardboard box to find fragile items in pieces when you’ve moved. Check out some guides on how to pack these items correctly as this will save time and trouble in the long run.
#2 – Not having a plan. Whenever you start packing a new room, it’s best to have a strategy on how you are going to pack. Consider which items, if any, are going to be needed either before the move or immediately after you arrive, and leave these to last. If you have to search through already packed boxes to find something you need, this will only add time to your packing.
The most necessary items that you will need within your first few hours in your new home can all be packed together, regardless of which room they originally came from. I would advise labelling this box so you can easily find it when you arrive and will have all of your essentials close at hand.
#3 – Not having the right kit. You will need plenty of packing boxes of differing sizes, packing tape, marker pens, packing material (bubble wrap, packing paper etc…) to hand so you can simply get on with the packing. Once you’re in the packing mindset it will take a lot of time to re-motivate yourself if you have to stop unexpectedly.
How Can You Make Packing For Moving House Easier?
It stands to reason that the less you have to move, the easier it would be. As such, it’s always worth decluttering every space before your move and making packing quicker. After all – you also don’t want to waste time moving things you don’t want.
So there you have it. How long it will take to pack your house totally depends on how much stuff you have in your property, the size of your house, the experience level of the packers, how many people are involved, and how many hours each day you can dedicate to the move.
For the fastest packing time, I would recommend dedicating full days rather than a few hours here and there to the move.
Work systematically throughout your home, going from room to room.
And lastly, keep any essential items until last so that you don’t have to search through already packed boxes.
If you follow the tips and timescales in this article, you should be able to have your entire home packed and ready to go on the day of your big move in plenty of time.
Good luck!
Read These Next:
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A Guide To Decluttering To Sell Your Home – Don’t Move Your Clutter…