Should I get the toiletries first or the cosmetics?
But I’ll need my face cleanser every day, so I should leave it for last, right?
How about the shampoos? Won’t they get spilled over?
I know millions of questions are probably running through your head right now. Packing a bathroom can be stressful. In the end, it has most of your daily essential products, if not all.
If you’re moving in a couple of weeks and dreading the packing process, I’ll make it easier for you. Organizing your thoughts is the key to packing efficiently. Here’s how to pack your bathroom for moving in the easiest way possible.
Table of Contents
How to Pack Bathroom for Moving
Packing a bathroom is a nuisance; you probably have a lot of items, and most of them are fragile or need careful handling. Here’s how to pack the bathroom efficiently in 9 steps.
Step 1: Sort Everything in the Bathroom
The first step in packing your bathroom is sorting out everything in it. You’ll find a lot of things that you need to throw out, and some will definitely be already expired. Sorting everything will give you the chance to keep only the necessary items, so you don’t crowd yourself while moving.
Start by categorizing all your products and separating them from each other. Here’s a brief list to show which items go together:
- Curling irons with hairdryers and similar devices.
- Toiletries with shower gel, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and lotions.
- Shampoos with conditioners and all hair products.
- Epilators with razors, foams, gels, brushes, and all shaving necessities.
- Makeup items together.
- Medicines and first aid kits together.
- Perfumes with deodorants and body splashes.
- Paper towels with tissue papers, toilet papers, and similar products.
If these things include items you use every day, such as toothpaste or face wash, make sure to keep them outside of your packing process. You’ll need to use them on your first night in the new place, so they’ll likely go in a box or a bag you have on you.
Step 2: Get Rid of Everything You Don’t Need
Once you sort everything into categories, it’s time to get rid of everything you don’t need. Start with taking out all broken items and throwing them away. Not only broken items, but rule out everything that’s damaged, dried out, or expired. You’ll likely find a lot of those if you tend to buy a lot of beauty care products.
After checking all the products, take a look at the towels, shower curtains, bathrobes, and bathroom mats. If you intend to buy some new ones for your new place, throw them out or look for a donation facility that’ll take them.
If you have a lot of cleaning to do yet, you can keep the ripped or worn-out towels and use them for that. Alternatively, you may keep them to use as stuffing and padding for moving boxes with fragile items inside. You can even use them as floor covers on the moving day.
After you’re done with all that, it’s time to put aside the hazardous items
that won’t be allowed on the truck. These include alcohol-based toiletries, aerosols, and flammable products like polish removers. You’ll have to move those yourself, or donate them if you don’t need them anymore.
Step 3: Prepare a Bathroom Bag
The next step is preparing a bathroom bag that includes your daily essentials. Till your moving day, there are a lot of products that you’ll use every day. Those should be in a bathroom bag that you have on you until the last minute.
The bag should include the following necessities if you use them every day:
- Toothbrush
- Toothpaste
- Shower gel
- Everyday hair care products
- Daily makeup
- Deodorant
- Hairbrush
- Shaving razor
- Paper towels
- Daily medicines
When you prepare your bathroom bag two days in advance of the moving day, you ensure that you’ll have these items on hand whenever you need them.
In all cases, you won’t be able to pack these things until the last moment because you need them. So keeping them in a bag in your bathroom makes it easy for you to take them out and repack them whenever you need.
Step 4: Pack All the Liquids
Packing all the liquids in your bathroom is the hardest part of the process. If you pack them incorrectly, you’re in for some surprises when you arrive at your new apartment. If you don’t want to soak your clothes in spilled shampoo and body gel, follow these steps.
Firstly, buy a lot of sealable plastic bags because you’ll need them for packing liquids. They’re the most efficient way to move liquids because they won’t get the spilled liquid out, even if the cap isn’t fastened securely. In the end, having a spilled shampoo inside a sealed plastic bag is better than having it spilled in your clothes bag.
If you have some opened bottles that aren’t too secure, follow these steps to store them to make sure they don’t spill over:
- Get the excess air out of all the bottles you want to move. When the air pressure changes, the containers may leak, so you want to prevent that.
- Grab plastic wrap and wrap all the bottles tightly. You can also cut small pieces of the wrap and put them on the bottle openings, then close the caps on them.
- Grab all the bottles you wrapped and put them in a plastic box with padding or stuffing on the sides. That way, you prevent them from moving inside and leaking.
Step 5: Pack the Fragile Items
Now that you have your cosmetics and half-opened bottles out of the way, it’s time to pack the fragile items. These include the stands, dispensers, soap trays, and any jars, bottles, or palettes you have around. If anything is made of glass, consider it fragile too.
These items can break easily, so you need to ensure they’re packed well to prevent any unfortunate incidents.
Wrap all these fragile pieces in packing paper, and it’s preferable to use bubble wrap if you have it around. If there’s an item that’s extra vulnerable, wrap it in two layers of paper or in bath towels.
After you’re done wrapping them, put these fragile items in well-padded boxes. Make sure there’s plenty of stuffing to absorb impact. If you don’t have box cushioning, you can use old clothes or towels that you intend to throw away.
If you’re taking the bathroom mirror with you, follow these steps to pack it:
- Cut a piece of cardboard to match its size and put it on the glass.
- Wrap the whole mirror in bubble wrap and paper, fastening them with packing tape.
- Carry a mirror as it is without packing it in a box.
Step 6: Pack the Makeup
The makeup is a bit challenging to pack because there are a lot of small items and a lot of details. Not to mention, most powders and eye shadow palettes don’t have secure lids, and you don’t want your expensive powder to end up crumbled in the box.
To pack makeup, you’ll need toiletry bags or makeup bags. No matter where you choose to pack your makeup, here are a few pointers to take care of.
For starters, make sure to put a cotton pad on all makeup containers that hold pressed powders. These include your blush palette, eyeshadow palette, and powder. All you have to do is to put the pad between the lid and the powder, so it’ll prevent it from crumbling.
Next, grab all the liquid bottles, including moisturizers, foundations, and hyaluronic acid, and cover their openings with plastic wrap. Then, tighten the lids around the wraps, and they’ll stay put. You can pack them in sealable plastic bags afterward to make sure they don’t spill in the boxes.
If you have polish removers or nail polishes, you can keep those in zip-top bags.
It’s worth noting that a lot of cosmetics are sensitive to heat, cold, or extreme temperatures in general. So, you’ll need to take extra measures when moving those if you’re moving apartments in scorching heat or freezing cold. Some people use climate-controlled vehicles for extreme cases.
Step 7: Pack the Toiletries
When packing the toiletries, make sure to put the light items on top and heavy items on the bottom. If they include breakable items, provide some cushioning in the boxes for absorbing impact.
When packing, make sure your toiletries are tightly packed together in the boxes without leaving room between them. If there’s an empty space, you can fill it with crushed paper to prevent your belongings from bouncing and hitting each other.
After you’re done, put some paper on top of the boxes for protection and close them tightly, sealing them with tape.
Step 8: Pack Your Hair Products
When packing your hair products, including shampoos, gels, conditioners, and lotions, make sure to put them upright. You’ll first cover their lids with plastic wrap, then put them in sealable plastic bags. Afterward, you’ll pack them in upright positions in your moving containers.
As you did with all the previous packed items, add some cushioning between the bottles, so they don’t fall on each other and break during moving.
After you’re done with the liquids, take some time packing your bobby pins, headbands, and hair clips. Most people keep those in the bathroom. If that’s the case with you, place them in zip-top bags and keep them with your beauty products.
Step 9: Organize the Boxes
If you leave the boxes unlabeled, you make things a lot harder for yourself when unpacking. Sure, it’ll take some time to label each box and check its contents, but it’ll save you more time than you think when it’s time to unpack.
When you arrive, the bathroom will likely be one of the first rooms you’ll unpack, if not the first. So, it’d be good to label all boxes with BATHROOM in clear letters, so you can reach them in an instant when you want to unpack.
After you label all the boxes, make sure to label the ones that need handling with care. You can write FRAGILE or something like that, so the moving folks will take care when carrying the boxes.
Bathroom Items That Aren’t Worth Moving
You may want to pack your whole bathroom when moving, but there are actually a lot of items that just aren’t worth it. Here are some things you may want to get rid of before moving.
Non-Labeled Products
If you have medicines or products that aren’t labeled with their expiry date, just throw them out. Chances are, they have no label because they’ve been in your cabinet for longer than necessary. The right thing to do is to get rid of these products, along with expired and damaged ones.
Unopened Products
If you tend to buy your products in bulk and not use them for quite some time, you may want to see if they’re worth moving. You can donate unopened shampoos and conditioners or give them away to a friend. They’ll cost you a lot to ship them, so you might as well donate them and get new ones at your new place.
Half-Opened Products
If you have half-opened products that you no longer use, or don’t use every day, you can try to use them up before packing and moving. Some of the remaining amounts will be too small, so they’re not worth moving. You might as well upgrade your beauty care routine for a couple of weeks before the move!
To Wrap Up
There are some good things to remember when packing bathrooms to ensure an efficient, fast-moving process.
For one, bathroom items are the hardest to pack. The fewer they are, the better. Some of them are fragile and may break at the least contact, such as jars and bottles. Meanwhile, some others are liquids, and you probably already opened them. These may cause spills.
So, try to sort out all your bathroom items before moving and throw out the unnecessary ones. You won’t believe how much easier moving will be.
