Where to find moving boxes: free, bought or brought to your door

Where can you find boxes for a move?

For free, at the supermarkets, stores and pharmacies near you, if you ask at the right time. For a price, at DIY stores, big furniture stores and online, where you get new boxes that all match. Or by swapping, in neighborhood groups and in listings from people who just finished moving.

If you move or store with Smoves there's a fourth option: we bring the boxes to your door ourselves. We only sell them that way, together with the service, never on their own.

Free: the stores near you throw boxes out every day

A supermarket gets goods in cardboard every day, and that cardboard has to disappear before closing. You're the person who makes it disappear for free, which makes you, for one evening, the produce section's favorite customer.

Here's how it works: go early in the morning or right after the trucks unload, ask someone who works there and have them set aside what you need. The social part is easier than it looks, because asking for an empty box is the one request a store clerk greets with relief.

The best ones are wine, detergent and household-goods boxes: thick cardboard, regular sizes, a bottom that holds. Then there's the fruit box, with holes in the sides, a soft bottom and an onion smell that never leaves. Pack your good sweater in it in October and it still smells like a stir-fry at Christmas.

Besides supermarkets, pharmacies, bookstores, shoe and electronics stores, cafés and your own office are worth a try. Bookstores give out small, sturdy boxes, which are exactly the right ones for books, and that's almost poetic.

• Go early, or right after the goods arrive

• Ask for whole boxes, no holes and no wet bottoms

• Leave the fruit box for someone else

• Take a few extra: they always run out first

The trouble with free boxes is that no two are alike

A box from the supermarket was designed to travel once, full of pasta. It has already made its trip, and it faces the second one with the enthusiasm of someone called back from retirement.

The first limit is strength: used cardboard bends at the corners and gives at the bottom, especially with books. The second is shape, because twenty boxes in twenty sizes don't stack, and a crooked pile in a van is an idea that ends badly.

The third is weight: even the sturdiest box has to be lifted by one person, so keep it under 20 kg, always. With free boxes the trick is to use them for light things, pillows, clothes, toys, and save the good ones for books and the kitchen.

One last check before filling them: no damp or dirty boxes, and none that held meat or fish. The move already has enough smells of its own.

Where to buy moving boxes, if you want them all to match

New boxes are sold at DIY and home improvement stores, at big furniture stores such as Ikea, which has a line of moving products, and at Leroy Merlin. You'll also find them online, on Amazon and on packaging websites, in multi-packs and often with tape and bubble wrap in the same order.

The upside is consistency: same sizes, same cardboard, straight stacks and a van loaded like a winning game of Tetris. The downside is that you have to get them home yourself, and a bundle of flat boxes on the tram at seven in the evening makes you rethink the word "light."

Online you skip the carrying but wait for the courier, so order a few days ahead. Prices change between stores, formats and quantities, so I won't list any here: compare them on each store's site on the day you buy.

One rule works everywhere: buy few sizes, two is plenty. The small box for heavy things and the large one for light things. If you also have clothes on hangers, there's the wardrobe box, a cardboard closet that does exactly what it promises.

Swapping: people who just moved can't wait to get rid of them

After a move there are dozens of flattened boxes left in a corner, and their owner has no idea what to do with them. You do, and that's the basis of every good business deal.

Look for them in neighborhood groups on social media, on free listing sites and among friends and coworkers who moved recently. They're boxes born for moving, so sturdy and often the right sizes, sometimes with a handwritten label that tells you a stranger's life story ("kitchen, DO NOT OPEN, seriously").

The catch is timing: they show up when someone gives them away, not when you need them. If your move has a fixed date, start asking a few weeks ahead, and when you're done, pass them back to the same group. Cardboard karma is real.

When it makes sense to get them with the move

If you move with Smoves, or put your things in our storage, you don't have to hunt for boxes: we bring them to your door. With storage you pick them while you book, at list prices, plus €29 VAT included per order to bring them: we bring them to your door, and you choose whether you want them as soon as possible or a few days before the pickup. With a move we add them to the quote.

There are three sizes, which is all a whole move needs: 40 × 30 × 30 cm, 60 × 40 × 40 cm and the wardrobe box. You can add tape, FRAGILE tape and bubble wrap, so the afternoon of running out of tape at eleven at night doesn't happen.

I'll say it plainly, because the question comes up: we only sell boxes to people who move or store with us, never on their own. If all you need is boxes, the options above are the right ones, and the onion box is still on the table, with all its risks.

Prices, the suggested kit and quantities are on the moving boxes page. We handle the move ourselves, with a free quote; if the new home isn't ready yet, there's storage during your move.