Packing Supplies Calculator

Boxes get most of the attention when people plan a move, but running short on packing supplies is just as disruptive. Tape is the classic example — it’s easy to underestimate how many rolls a full house actually takes, and finding out you’re down to your last few feet with a dozen boxes still open usually means a supply-store run in the middle of packing, at the worst possible time. The same goes for packing paper and bubble cushion for anything fragile, and for labels once you’re trying to remember which of thirty identical boxes has the coffee maker in it.

Overbuying has its own cost. A garage stacked with unopened tape rolls or unused packing paper is money that could have gone toward the move itself, and most of it isn’t worth returning once it’s been opened. The goal isn’t to buy “a lot” of everything — it’s to buy roughly the right amount for the size of your move.

That’s what the estimate below is for. It scales primarily with your total box count: more boxes means more tape to seal them and more paper to cushion the contents, on a fairly predictable ratio. From there, it adjusts for what you’re packing — selecting fragile categories like dishware, glassware, artwork, or electronics increases the bubble cushion estimate, since those items need more padding per box than something like folded towels or paperback books. Labels scale with box count too, since the goal is enough to mark every box, not just most of them.

Answer the same questions you’d use for a box estimate — home size, how much you own, and any fragile categories that apply — and you’ll get a supply list sized to match, without guessing or rounding up “just in case” on everything at once.