Moving to a new home can be both exciting and stressful. One of the most frustrating aspects of moving is packing your belongings. While some items in your home prove difficult to pack up, clothes can be easy to pack if you know some useful tricks. Here, you will find some useful ways to pack hanging and folded clothing during your move.

1. Drawer packing

If you find yourself with an abundance of dresser drawers full of folded clothing, it can prove to be very difficult to transfer all these folded clothes into packing boxes from the dresser drawers. Also, you’ll have to move your dressers at some point during your move. With a little clever trick, you can deal both at the same time. Instead of removing your clothes from the dresser drawers, just wrap individual drawers in plastic wrap to hold your threads in place and place the drawers into your moving vehicle.

2. Dealing with the hangers

If it’s time to pack up the hanging clothes in your closet, don’t waste time removing the clothes from the hangers and folding them just to pack them. Grab a handful of hanging clothes, poke the hanger hooks through the bottom of a garbage bag, use a bread tie to secure the hangers in a bundle, drape the garbage bag over the clothes, and lay the bag down in the back of your car. A job that would’ve taken over an hour and more can be shorted down to last minutes with this clever tip.

3. Change your strategy

While the most common way to pack away clothes is to use boxes, you may want to consider changing your moving steps up a little bit. Instead of grabbing some of those clumsy moving boxes, you should stuff your folded clothes into a garbage bag instead. Garbage bags are easier to acquire, come with built-in handles, and are easier to carry than a large box. A garbage bag full of clothes could also be useful as a cushion for your more fragile objects, or you can stuff it between two boxes of your delicate belongings.

4. Moving and packing in layers

If you’d rather not willing to use the garbage bag trick for packing away your hanging clothes, there is another solution that might be in your favour. Using a suitcase or a box, you can just pack your hanging clothes by means of layering them. Remove a handful of hanging clothes from the rod, 4-5 at a time, lay the clothes down in the bottom of the box or suitcase but fold them over halfway so that the hooks of the hangers are now lying on top of the clothes. Continue to pile on folded layers of hanging clothes, keeping them on their hangers, until everything is packed.

To make your items lighter for the move, consider going through all your clothes and doing a small purge of items that no longer fit, are damaged, or are no longer desirable to you. Pack these unwanted clothes up and donate them to a local homeless shelter or charity organization. By paring down, you can save on the cost of your move and do some good for your community at the same time.