Most of us keep extra hangers on hand in the laundry room and our bedroom closets. If you prefer to fold a lot of your clothing for your move, you’ll have even more hangers that you’ll want to keep. But, group a bunch of empty hangers together, and they seem to take on a life of their own. Even though you try to stack them or make them behave, they end up a tangled mess. Let’s get those hangers under control and packed up for your move.
Moving Supplies You’ll Need to Pack Your Hangers
- Medium size moving box
- Masking tape
- String
- Scissors
- Packing tape
- Permanent black marker
Steps for Packing Hangers for a Move
1. Gather all of your loose hangers
Throw all of your hangers on your bed. Be sure to gather stray hangers from other bedrooms and the laundry room.
2. Purge
Gather broken, bent, and unusable hangers and recycle those that you can. Put the remainder in the trash. Donate functional hangers that you no longer use.
3. Put hangers in categories
Separate hangers into piles. You’ll likely have quality wooden hangers of several types – pants, suits, and coat hangers. Separate those by category and continue the process with padded hangers, ‘velvet’ covered space saving hangers, pants and skirts hangers with clips, plastic hangers, child-size hangers, and if you use them, wire hangers. And you also may have some scarf, lingerie, tie (see ‘How to Pack Your Ties for a Move’), or belt hangers. Separate those as well.
4. Grab a set of six matching hangers
Gather together six hangers of the same type and tape the necks together with masking tape or string. Then, tape or tie the hangers together at the bottom. Now those little beasts can’t get loose or tangled. Do not use packing tape to join hangers – packing tape is hard to remove and leaves a sticky residue. Continue taping or tying all of your hangers in bunches of six.
5. Pack the hangers
Place the hanger sets at the bottom of your wardrobe boxes. Alternatively, you can use a medium size box and stack the sets in the box with the hooks positioned down toward the corner of the box. Place more sets in the box, side by side. You may want to wrap several layers of packing paper around sets of fabric-padded or quality wooden hangers for protection.
6. Seal the moving box and label it
Seal the moving box closed with packing tape. Use your permanent black marker to label the box, ‘hangers,’ and write the destination room on the box, so the movers or your helpers will know where to deliver the box.