What we do, and which of it you need

Three ways to do it. We pack the whole house, we pack the half nobody enjoys — kitchen, glass, pictures, the cabinet with all the awkward shapes in it — or we drop materials off a week early so you can work through it at your own pace.

Materials matter more than people expect. Double-walled cartons, wardrobe boxes that keep hanging clothes on their hangers, tissue and bubble for the breakables, and purpose-made cases for pictures and mirrors. A gilt frame under a blanket in a stacked van is a frame with a corner missing.

If you are packing yourself: fill boxes to the top so they do not crush, and keep them liftable. Half-full boxes collapse under the ones above and overloaded ones split, and both happen in the van rather than in your hallway.

Completion dates rarely line up neatly, and a chain that slips is the commonest reason people ring us in a hurry. Containerised storage covers the gap — your things go into their own container, inventoried as they go in, and stay there until you are ready.

Because we load it, we can load it usefully: the things you will want first go in last. If you are storing for a while, tell us roughly how long and whether you will need access, because that changes how the container is packed and it is hard to fix afterwards.

It works for the other situation too — downsizing, or a village renovation where a proportion of the furniture needs somewhere to sit while the work finishes.

A first flat in Northampton with a bed, a desk and a dozen boxes is a real job with a real staircase attached, and it gets quoted rather than treated as a favour squeezed between two bookings.

Family moves are the other end of the same service — more furniture, a loft that has quietly filled, and a date that has to work around school and around a chain nobody controls. We plan around the dates you cannot move rather than the ones that suit us.

Downsizing sits between the two and is usually harder emotionally than logistically. If a proportion of the house has nowhere to go yet, that is what storage is for, and there is no rush to decide.