How Many Moving Boxes Do I Need? Our New Box Calculator Answers It in Under a Minute
It is the question we are asked more than any other, and it has never had a good answer. “How many boxes do I need?” Ask ten removal firms and you will get ten different rules of thumb. Ask the internet and you will get a number calculated for a four-bedroom house in Texas.
So we built the answer instead. The Moving Box Calculator is now live on our site: tell it about your home, and it works out what your move actually needs, priced in euro, from stock we hold in Cork.
Why guessing costs you money
Getting the number wrong is expensive in both directions, and we see both every week.
- Under-order and you are packing at eleven at night with the van booked for eight, ringing round for whatever anyone has left. That second order costs more per box, arrives slower, and never quite matches the first.
- Over-order and you have paid for cardboard you will flatten and put in the recycling. It is money spent on nothing, and it is a waste of good board.
The calculator exists to land you between the two.
Leading the field, not following it
Moving Supplies & Packaging has been supplying moving boxes from Cork for years. In that time the product has changed less than you might think — a well-made double wall box is still a well-made double wall box — but the way people buy has changed completely.
We take the view that an Irish supplier should be setting that pace rather than waiting for someone else to. It sits alongside the other changes we have made this year: automatic bulk discounts that replace fiddly multi-pack listings, honest weight-based delivery pricing, and a once-used box range for customers who would rather buy a box that has already had one life.
How it works
Start with a preset — studio, one-bed apartment, two-bed, three-bed, four-bed, five-bed — or build your home up room by room: kitchen, sitting room, dining room, double and single bedrooms, bathrooms, home office, utility and hot press, attic, garage or shed. Every room type carries its own profile, because a kitchen and an attic fill boxes at completely different rates and in completely different sizes.
Then you tune it to your household with three things that matter more than square footage:
- How much you are keeping. A move that doubles as a clear-out needs materially fewer boxes than a move where everything comes.
- How long you have lived there. Ten years in one house accumulates more than two years does. The calculator accounts for it.
- Children. Toys, clothes and school things add up fast, and they are the single most commonly underestimated part of a family move.
You can also choose new or once-used boxes, add protective materials such as bubble wrap, tape and mattress covers, and tell it if the contents are going into storage rather than straight into a new home — storage changes what you should be packing into and how well it needs to be sealed.
It will show you the cheapest way to buy from us
This is the part we are most pleased with, and it is the part most retailers would have designed differently.
Once the calculator estimates what you need, it prices every route to getting it — buying exactly the boxes on your list, or taking one of our Professional Moving Kits and topping it up — and it recommends whichever comes out cheapest for you. Not the biggest basket. Not the kit that matches your bedroom count. The cheapest.
Sometimes that means it tells you to skip the kit entirely and buy loose boxes. That is fine. If the kit is not the better deal for your particular move, we would rather the tool said so than have you find out afterwards.
Every price it quotes already includes our automatic quantity discounts — 3% from 5 boxes, rising to 9% at 50 — so the total on screen is the total the basket charges. And if your move needs more than 50 of any one box, it will stop and point you at the office for a proper quote, because at that size the delivery deserves a human being rather than a checkout.
It is in beta — and we would like your help
We are being upfront about this: the calculator is in beta.
The model behind it is built on real order history rather than guesswork. But no two households are the same, and there will be moves it reads better than others — a workshop full of tools, a serious book collection, a house that has been in the family for thirty years. We are refining it as real usage comes in.
So please treat the result as a very well-informed starting point rather than gospel. If the number looks wrong for your move, it might be. And if you are in any doubt at all, ring the office on 021 4872405 or email info@movingsupplies.ie. Talking through a move takes about five minutes and we have been doing it since 1978 — no tool replaces that, and this one was never meant to.
If you use it and the recommendation looks off, tell us. That feedback is exactly what the beta is for, and it goes straight to the people who can change the model.
Try it
It takes under a minute, it costs nothing, and there is no obligation to buy anything at the end of it: movingsupplies.ie/moving-box-calculator
We deliver nationwide from our Cork depot, with free local delivery on orders over €75 within Cork City limits, and collection from the depot if that suits you better.
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