self packing

[catinahat1975]

Hello

So to save a bit we will be packing our own stuff. Has any of you out there done this too? When packing boxes what do you need to write on them? How much do you need to tell custums i.e box of books or 27 books, kids toys or plastic toys games ect.

I understand they want to know what's in boxes so they know where to look but how much info is enough?

 

hope to hear some good answers over this.

[Tickled Pink]

We packed all our own boxes. we didn't write the contents on the outside, as the company provided paperwork where we had to list the contents of each box on the corresponding page to box number.

 

What we did do, and very glad we did as some of the boxes were quite large, was write on the inside lid what went in as we packed. We found that this saved heaps of time when it came to writing up the paperwork as one person could write, while the other person listed the contents for you. This saved having to either a)unpack to see whats at the bottom, b)unwrap things that you couldn't remember what they were! etc.

 

At the other end this was also really helpful as after a few weeks/months apart from the boxes we couldn't remember what we'd packed where... this way we were able to just open the box and read, and know whether that was the box we were after or not.

 

Regarding listing what was in each, we didn't go into numbers of books, shoes etc, but we were as specific as the space for writing allowed. So I recall we had a box that was all clothes and shoes - so that's all we put. However the box with cooking utensils in, we did try to list saucepans, wooden spoons, mugs etc - that way if the xray machine did pick up odd shaped items they could easily check it off against the list, and not necessarily open anything. This must have worked as we only had one box opened, and that was because I forgot I had left a couple of batteries in some bike lights!

 

Hope that helps a little...

[rikyuu]

we packed most of our stuff ourselves and fully labelled them with name, to city, phone, email. The packers (from Crown) did a few and just wrote my surname on them very roughly and wrongly spelt. I asked them how the hell those boxes weren't going to get lost and they just said it works out somehow, so I frantically stuck my labels on their boxes too. Nothing got lost, but it was 3 months before our stuff even left the UK and that was after phoning/emailing Crown almost from Japan and Australia.

[Tickled Pink]

We also wrote our name, ID number, contact mobile phone number and address they were going to, in the spaces provided, ourselves.... for mostly the reasons given above! But maybe I am just a bit OCD!!