Packing and Unpacking Services in Tucson

Packing is added labour on top of your hourly moving rate, plus the cartons and materials you use. A two mover crew is $120 to $150 per hour and a three mover crew is $160 to $200 per hour, and packing a home usually happens the day before the move rather than on move day. A full pack of a two bedroom home commonly takes a crew most of a day. We confirm the estimate in writing after a survey. Materials are quoted separately. See how our pricing works.

Packing yourself is cheaper and takes longer than almost everyone expects. A kitchen alone is usually a full day. Packing it ourselves costs more but removes the single biggest cause of move day overruns, which is a home that is not actually ready when the truck arrives. A middle option suits most people: you pack clothes, books and linen, and we pack the kitchen, the glassware, the artwork and anything else breakable. Because move day is billed by the hour, a properly packed home genuinely reduces the moving bill.

Yes, we do full packs, partial packs and fragile only packs. On a full pack a crew arrives with cartons and materials and packs the entire home, room by room, labelling as they go. On a partial pack you tell us what to leave alone. Whatever we pack, we pack properly for transport rather than for storage, which is a different job. What we cannot pack is anything hazardous: fuel, propane, paint, solvents, aerosols, ammunition or pool chemicals.

Double walled dish pack cartons for kitchens, wardrobe cartons that let clothes travel on their hangers, mirror and picture cartons for framed art and glass, small book cartons because a large one full of books cannot safely be lifted, packing paper, bubble wrap and tape. Furniture gets quilted moving pads and stretch wrap rather than cartons. Anything that needs a made to measure box, such as a large mirror or a piece of art, can be custom crated.

Start three to four weeks out with anything you will not need: out of season clothes, books, decorative items, the spare room, the garage. Leave the kitchen and daily essentials until the last few days, and pack a clearly labelled box of first night items that travels with you rather than on the truck. If we are packing for you, we normally do it the day before the move so the home is loaded on move day rather than packed and loaded in one go.

Label the side rather than the top, because the top is invisible once boxes are stacked. Write the destination room, not the room it came from, and add one line about the contents. Mark fragile cartons on more than one side. If you are moving to a home with rooms of the same name, number them and put a matching sign on each door at the new address. That one step is what lets a crew place every carton in the right room without asking, and it saves you hours of carrying boxes around afterwards.

Yes, and it is worth deciding in advance how far you want it to go. The basic version is unpacking cartons, placing contents on surfaces and removing the packing materials, which gets you out of a house of boxes on day one. The full version puts things away where you want them, which takes longer and works best if you are there to direct it. Either way, ask about carton removal, because a two bedroom home generates a surprising volume of flattened cardboard.

The kitchen, without much competition. It holds the most fragile items, the most awkward shapes and the widest range of weights, and it is the room people leave until last, when they are already tired. Glassware and plates need dish pack cartons and paper between every item, plates travel on edge rather than stacked flat, and small appliances pack better in their original boxes if you still have them. If you only hand one room to a packing crew, make it this one.