I bookmarked every viral packing hack for my move to Austin and only one trick survived the hype
When I moved out of my place near Austin in January, I had 40 boxes and no plan, so I saved every viral packing hack I could find. Most of them were junk, but the one that actually worked was rolling my clothes into tight tubes and standing them up in the box like books on a shelf. That alone got my whole closet into two boxes instead of the five I guessed, and nothing came out wrinkled after a 900 mile drive. The trick that flopped hard was wrapping glasses in socks, since half of them still cracked. Did anyone else find a packing hack that held up after the move was over?
Wrapping glasses in socks always seemed like a bad idea to me and hearing that half of yours cracked makes me feel better about skipping it. Socks are thin and stretchy, so they can't really cushion anything when a box gets dropped or bounced around in a truck. I ended up using my actual bath towels for the fragile stuff and doubled them up, and not a single plate broke.
Rolling clothes is the only one I still use too, though I learned the hard way not to cram the box so full the flaps won't close. My mom swore by wrapping glasses in socks and I tried it with newspaper instead and still lost two mugs, so maybe glass is just cursed no matter what. The one thing that saved me was labeling boxes on the side instead of the top, since you can read it when they're stacked up.