How many moving boxes do you need?
Rules of thumb give you a starting range. Your own inventory gives you a number you can actually plan with.
Rules of thumb (and their limits)
One German moving firm suggests about 10–15 cartons per person: 15–25 for a single person, 40–60 for a 3-room flat, 60–120 for a house (Möbeltransport24). These are generic ranges, not measurements of your home. A book collector and a minimalist with the same floor plan need very different numbers.
A better method
- List items room by room (see inventory guide). Measure anything bulky. Use estimates for the rest and mark them as estimates.
- Add up the volume by room.
- Divide by usable box volume, not geometric volume. A 3 cu ft box doesn't take 3 cu ft of odd-shaped things: you lose space to padding and gaps. Box Roster uses a practical fill (default 75 %, an assumption you can change).
- Check weight as well as volume. Books fill a box by weight long before they fill it by volume, so dense items need more, smaller boxes (see overloaded boxes).
- Add a margin for things you forgot. Unknown-size items add at least one box each in the planner.
Worked example
Four drawers of folded clothes at about 50 × 40 × 15 cm each make 120 L in total. A large box (18 × 18 × 24 in) is 127 L geometrically, or about 96 L at 75 % fill, so you need 2 large boxes. At an estimated 6 kg per drawer that's 24 kg, which is also 2 boxes under a 20 kg carry limit. This is one of the planner's hand-checked tests.