Build your list room by room from 600+ pieces of furniture, say how full your home is, and see how many moving boxes you need by size, small to wardrobe, with the tape and paper to pack them. The same list works in the truck size and storage unit calculators.
Your boxes
Add your furniture, the boxes follow
Open a room, tap what's in it, and the boxes you need appear here by size. Your list is saved in this browser.
How full is your home?
A normal home: full closets, a stocked kitchen, some books and decor.
Small box–1.5 cu ft. Heavy things: books, records, files, canned food, tools
Medium box–3 cu ft. The workhorse: kitchen things, toys, decor, small appliances, everything that isn't heavy or huge
Large box–4.5 cu ft. Light and bulky: bedding, pillows, towels, lampshades, winter coats
Dish pack–5.2 cu ft. Double-walled, for plates, glasses, vases and anything that breaks
Wardrobe box–12 cu ft. Hanging clothes straight from the closet, about two feet of rod per box
Packing tape– rolls55-yard rolls. About 0 ft of tape in all (0 yards): 36 ft seals a box, 28 ft a small one.
Packing paper– lbsA pound for every dish pack, where nearly all the paper goes. Clean paper for anything you eat from; newspaper leaves ink.Your inventory
Your furniture, room by room
Or skip the packing
We bring the boxes, pack the home and take the paper away
Two packers pack an apartment in about three hours; a three-bedroom house takes a crew of three most of a day. Dishes in dish packs, closets straight into wardrobe boxes, every box labeled by room.
Packing flat rates for weekday packing in the first three weeks of the month; your price is set from what we're packing, before we start.
How it works
Start with the rooms every home has, add the ones yours has (basement, garage, attic), and tap each piece of furniture. Tap again for a second one. Search or use the A–Z filter for anything not in the room's list.
Minimalist, moderate or dense. The furniture tells us the size of the home; the closets and cabinets decide how many boxes it really takes, so pick the one that sounds like yours.
Three boxes for every 200 lbs of furniture, split the way a crew packs: medium boxes do most of the work, large for the light and bulky, small for the heavy, dish packs for the kitchen and wardrobes for the closets. With the tape in 55-yard rolls and the paper in pounds, and the whole list emailed to you as a PDF for the store.
By home
The usual counts, by home, from the calculator at its moderate setting. Every home is packed differently, so use them to budget; the calculator above gives you the count for your own furniture.
20 to 45 boxes
A studio with a bed, a sofa, a dresser and a small kitchen is 20 to 30 boxes. A furnished 1 bedroom apartment with its closets and a stocked kitchen is 30 to 45: mostly mediums, 3 to 5 dish packs and a wardrobe box or two.
50 to 80 boxes
Two bedrooms, a living room and a full kitchen come to 50 to 80 boxes. Two closets of hanging clothes take 2 to 4 wardrobe boxes, and the kitchen alone is 10 to 15 boxes, half of them dish packs.
80 to 130 boxes
Houses hold more than their rooms suggest: a garage, a basement, a linen closet, a pantry. A 2 bedroom house is 80 to 100 boxes, a 3 bedroom house 100 to 130, with 8 to 13 dish packs and 4 to 6 wardrobes.
120 to 190 boxes
Four bedrooms, a family of four or five and years in one place reach 120 to 190 boxes. Set the calculator to dense if the garage and basement are full; that's where the count runs away.
10 to 15 boxes
The kitchen takes the most boxes per square foot and the most paper. Plan on 4 to 6 dish packs for plates, glasses and bowls, a few mediums for pots, small appliances and pantry food, and a pound of packing paper per dish pack.
1 wardrobe per 2 ft of rod
A wardrobe box holds about two feet of closet rod, hangers and all. Count the feet of hanging clothes in each closet and divide by two; coats and dresses need the taller box, folded clothes go in large boxes.
Box sizes
Five boxes pack a whole home. The rule: the heavier the contents, the smaller the box, so every box can be lifted and stacked without crushing the one under it.
| Box | Size | What goes in |
|---|---|---|
| Small box | 1.5 cu ft | Heavy things: books, records, files, canned food, tools |
| Medium box | 3 cu ft | The workhorse: kitchen things, toys, decor, small appliances, everything that isn't heavy or huge |
| Large box | 4.5 cu ft | Light and bulky: bedding, pillows, towels, lampshades, winter coats |
| Dish pack | 5.2 cu ft | Double-walled, for plates, glasses, vases and anything that breaks |
| Wardrobe box | 12 cu ft | Hanging clothes straight from the closet, about two feet of rod per box |
Boxes are the start of the move, not the end of it. Red Cat's packing services bring the boxes and pack the home for a flat rate, our local movers bring the truck and the crew, and the moving truck size calculator and storage unit size calculator use the same list for the rest of the move.
FAQ
What people ask before buying boxes. Anything else, give us a call.
Talk with Red CatKnow your price.
Then let's move.
Your stuff moves. Your price doesn't.
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