Ranch and split-level homes across Highland, Griffith, and Munster tend to share one thing: a basement that’s been quietly filling up since the last move, sometimes the one before that. Most packing guides start at the front door and work through the house in whatever order the floor plan happens to suggest, which holds up fine until they reach that basement and run out of useful advice. Here’s an order built for a Region home instead, starting where things have piled up the longest.
Basement and Garage First
These two spaces carry the most weight, the least-used items, and nearly everything that’s easy to forget even exists until moving week arrives. Working through them first, two to three weeks ahead, keeps the rest of the house from turning into a scramble later.
- Sort by whether an item is actually coming along, not by how long it’s been down there
- Keep screws, brackets, and small hardware in a labeled bag taped right to the furniture they came off of
- Chemicals, fuel, and anything under pressure never ride in the truck; old paint, half-used propane tanks, and aerosol cans should get used up, given away, or dropped at a hazardous-waste site in the weeks before your move
- Write the destination room on every box, not the room it’s leaving; that’s what saves guesswork on delivery day
Kitchen Next
The kitchen eats up more packing time than any other room, mostly because fragile items and heavy ones share the same shelf.
| Item type | How it packs best |
|---|---|
| Bowls and stackable dishes | Nest three or four together with paper between each, then wrap the whole stack once |
| Plates | Stand upright in a dish-pack box with divider cells instead of stacking them flat |
| Small appliances | Original box if you still have it; otherwise wrap upright with cords coiled and taped down |
| Pantry goods | Small boxes only; canned goods add weight fast once a box gets bigger |
A rough test for box weight
Lift the box the way you would on move day, one arm, not two. Struggling means it’s overpacked for its size and needs splitting into two lighter ones. Dense items like cookware, books, or canned goods hit a box’s weight limit long before they fill the space, so keep those boxes small and stop around 30 to 40 pounds each.
Living and Dining Rooms
Larger furniture in these rooms usually needs its own plan instead of a box.
- Glass tabletops travel apart from their base, padded and stood on edge, never flat under weight
- Bookshelves get emptied ahead of the move rather than carried loaded, since the shifting weight strains both the piece and whoever’s lifting it
- Lamp shades come off and travel boxed separately from the base
- Rugs roll instead of fold, taped at both ends so they can’t unroll in transit
A curio cabinet or a rolltop desk isn’t a box job, it’s a crew job. Planning the path out the door ahead of time is what keeps a hallway corner from getting dinged. — Marcus Delgado
Bedrooms and Closets
Dressers rarely need to be emptied. If the drawers aren’t too heavy, leave folded clothing right where it is and tape them shut for the ride. Older or more delicate furniture is the exception, so pull the drawers out first, keeping the empty frame from flexing under its own weight while it’s carried.
Clothes on hangers move fastest packed straight into a wardrobe box without folding a thing. Bath towels and bed linens don’t need their own box at all. Wrap them around anything breakable that’s already going into a box nearby, and you’ve solved two problems with one item.
- Closets first, dressers second. Closets rarely get touched day to day, so they’re safe to pack down early.
- Set aside one open bag per person for whatever gets worn or used in the last 48 hours before the truck arrives.
- Save seasonal coats and boots for last on a November-through-March move, since you may still need them the morning your crew shows up.
Bathrooms and Linen Closets
Small rooms, but deceptively slow to pack given how much liquid and glass they hold.
- Tape lids shut on liquids and bag them separately in case anything leaks in transit
- Wrap mirrors and glass shelving on edge, marked clearly on two sides
- Loose towels pack around fragile bathroom items instead of filling a box of their own
- Keep one toiletry bag out of the boxes entirely for moving day itself
Electronics, Wherever They Live
No matter which room a TV, router, or gaming console comes out of, the same handling rules apply.
Ten minutes before anything gets unplugged
Number each cable with a small tape flag before you disconnect anything, and mark its matching port with the same number, so hookup at the new place takes minutes instead of guesswork. A TV or monitor should ride on its edge in its own box, never stacked flat beneath other items. Load anything electronic where it’s shielded from weather, not on an open tailgate, especially during a Region winter when road salt and slush are already in play.
Moving Into a Downtown Chicago High-Rise
A high-rise move changes the packing math. Freight elevators run on a reserved window, often 60 to 90 minutes, so boxes need to be staged and ready to move in one continuous push rather than trickling out while you’re still packing. Fewer, clearly labeled boxes beat a large pile of loosely packed ones when everything has to clear a single elevator car inside a fixed window. We handle the building’s freight reservation and proof of insurance ahead of time, so the crew arrives already knowing which door, which elevator, and which time slot belongs to them.
Questions we hear most
Where should we start if the whole house feels like too much?
The basement and the garage. Almost nothing there gets touched day to day, so clearing those first buys real breathing room for the rooms you’re still living in.
Should we buy our own boxes, or wait on you to bring them?
Reuse sturdy ones if you’ve got them; brand doesn’t matter to us. For everything else, we can drop off a stack a few days ahead of load day.
Can you handle packing just part of the house?
Often it’s the kitchen, since nobody’s excited to wrap forty mugs solo, or the basement, since nobody wants to be the one deciding what finally gets thrown out. Either one folds into your flat rate with no separate invoice.