My wife and I are moving. After many months of searching for a new home, we found ours late in 2015. After some back and forth with negotiations we agreed on a price. The only catch was we had to sell our home. It was stressful, but in the end, we were able to do so quickly. That left us with the exciting chore of packing and moving. I am being sarcastic when I say packing and moving is fun. It was tough and stressful but we learned many things along the way. One of which is frugal packing tips.

When we first started to pack, we really didn’t know where to start. Do we hire professionals or do we do it ourselves? What about supplies? While trying to figure all of these questions out at once was overwhelming, we took a step back and figured things out. So below are our frugal packing tips.

3 Frugal Packing Tips

#1. DIY Is Cheaper

It should come as no surprise that packing and moving yourself is a lot cheaper, unless of course your company is paying for you to hire professionals. We got a few quotes but all seemed so high – $1,500 to $2,000 just to load and unload a truck. We would still be packing the boxes!

So we decided to do it ourselves. We reached out to friends and family and asked if they could help. Whatever time worked for them, worked for us. We had a steady stream of different people every few days helping us to pack up boxes.
In the end, I had a couple of my buddies come and help me load the truck and then unload it at the new house. Overall, it wasn’t a bad experience.

#2. Get Your Supplies For Cheap

When it comes to getting your supplies, you have to think outside the box. For tape and bubble wrap, we chose to shop on Amazon. We checked out a couple of office supply stores and the grocery store but the prices were too high. It came down to Amazon and a warehouse club. In the end, Amazon won.

As for boxes, this is where the creativity comes in. You can pay for boxes, or you can get them for free. We chose the free route. For our wine, we went to the wine store (here in Pennsylvania, there is a separate store that sells wine and hard liquor) to get some used boxes to put our bottles into.

For our other belongings, we headed to the grocery store and got a bunch of egg boxes. Note that at one store, they claimed they were no longer allowing customers to take the egg boxes as there is the risk of getting salmonella from them. But we didn’t have this issue with another store.

We also enlisted the help of my sister. She works at a drug company and was able to get us some really sturdy boxes from her work.

The point regarding boxes is this: don’t just pay for them. Ask around to see who might be able to get you some quality boxes from their work.

#3. Use Time As Your Friend

As I said at the start, packing isn’t fun for most of us. But to get through it, start as soon as possible. Trust me, it not only helps with the stress levels, but it also allows you to be smart when packing. Here is what I mean by this.

We had about 3-4 weeks to pack. We could have waited until the last 2 weeks to really pack things up. But we didn’t. We started right away with things we knew we were using now and most likely wouldn’t be using in the next month.
The great thing about this, is that most of these things you really don’t need at all. We were able to throw out a lot of stuff. This meant less stuff to pack and less clutter at the new house.

The same goes for clothing. As we packed, we set aside clothes we really didn’t wear any longer and donated them. Again, this saved us room when packing and room at the new house.

The more time you have to pack, the less stressful it will be and the more you can de-clutter as you pack.

Final Thoughts

In the end, packing isn’t fun but you can be frugal when it comes to packing and moving to a new house. All you have to do is to think outside the box a bit. If you can do this, you can save yourself time and money the next time you are moving to a new house.