There's a decent rule here: buy what you'll use again within a year, rent the rest. Applied honestly, that puts most of the moving-supply aisle in the rent column.
Rent these
- Containers. You need forty of them for one week and zero of them forever after.
- A moving dolly. Storing one takes more space than most apartments have to spare.
- Wardrobe containers. Extremely useful for one day, useless the next.
- Moving blankets. Bulky, and you'll never find them when you need them again.
Buy these
- A basic tool kit — you'll use it in the new place within the first week
- Packing paper, if you'd rather not have leftover partial rolls of tape
- A box cutter or good scissors
- Furniture sliders, which are cheap and genuinely useful long-term
The storage-bin trap
The tempting middle path is buying plastic bins from a big-box store, on the theory that you'll use them for storage afterward. In practice, most people need forty and want six.
Consumer storage bins also aren't built for this. They're thinner than commercial totes, their lids don't latch, and they crack when stacked more than a couple high with real weight in them.
What the rental should include
If you're renting containers, the dolly, labels, delivery, and pickup should be in the price rather than bolted on. Ours are. Extra dollies, wardrobe totes, blankets, and packing paper are available as add-ons when you need them.
Everything included, nothing to store afterward
Totes, a dolly, reusable labels, delivery, and pickup in every package.
