What to pack in your open first box
Your open first box is the one box that rides in your car, gets carried in before the furniture, and holds everything you'll want in the first few hours at the new place. Pack it last, open it first, and the first evening in an empty house gets a lot easier.
It is also the box that decides how many times you get asked something on night one. Everything that isn't in it is a question, and the questions have a way of finding one person.
Some people call it the first night box or the essentials box. Same idea.
What goes in it
| For | Pack |
|---|---|
| Getting in the door | Keys, phone chargers, a flashlight, a box cutter |
| The bathroom | Toilet paper, hand soap, towels, toothbrushes and toothpaste |
| The kitchen | Coffee and the coffee maker, a kettle, paper plates, cups, a roll of paper towels |
| The first night | Sheets for one bed, pillows, a change of clothes for everyone, medicine |
| Tidying up | Trash bags, cleaning spray, a sponge, basic tools and a screwdriver |
Print that table or work down it on your phone. If you want a second list beside it, the free printables page has checklists you can tick off.
Four rules that make it work
- It rides with you. Not on the truck. The truck can be delayed, misrouted or simply parked while the crew takes lunch.
- It's obvious. One box, one color of tape, and the words "OPEN FIRST" on all four sides and the top.
- It's packed last. It holds the things you were still using that morning, so it can't be sealed early.
- One per bathroom and one for the kitchen if it's a big house. Two labeled boxes beat one you have to dig through.
Things people forget every time
- A phone charger for every phone. Not the one you'll "grab at the last minute."
- Prescriptions and the pharmacy's number.
- Pet food, a bowl and the leash. Easy to overlook on a day when the animals are the ones with no idea what's happening.
- Toilet paper. It turns up on essentially every open-first-box list we read, which says something about how often it gets left behind.
- Shower curtain and rings, if the new place doesn't have them. A shower you can't use on night one is a rough start.
- Scissors or a box cutter, which is funny only until every box is taped shut and the cutter is in one of them.
The pattern behind that list is worth knowing: the things that go missing in a move are small, generic and easy to deprioritize when your attention is already spread across forty other decisions. Chargers, cables, small kitchen tools, keys, step ladders. Not carelessness — triage.
Where to put it at the new place
Carry it in first and set it in the kitchen or the main bathroom — somewhere you'll walk past, not a bedroom that fills up with furniture. Then say out loud where it is, so the person asking about the toilet paper doesn't ask you.
Keep it findable after it's open
An open first box gets unpacked fast, which means its contents end up scattered across a house where nothing has a place yet. Before you seal it, take a photo looking down into it. The photo is what tells you, two days later, whether the good scissors were in that box or still in a kitchen box somewhere.
For scale on the habit: the average American already loses about 2.5 days a year to looking for things they own (Pixie, 2017), and that is in a house where everything has a settled place.
That's the same habit that works for every other box in the move: a number, a room, and a photo of what went in. How to keep track of moving boxes walks through it, and the free label maker prints the labels.
We built Stow Haven to hold those photos and that list in one place, so anyone helping can look up a box instead of asking you.
Questions
- What should be in an open first box?
- Toilet paper, hand soap and towels; phone chargers, a flashlight and a box cutter; coffee and the coffee maker with paper plates and cups; sheets for one bed, pillows, a change of clothes and any medicine; and trash bags with basic cleaning supplies.
- Is an open first box the same as a first night box?
- Yes. Open first box, first night box and essentials box all mean the one box you keep with you rather than putting on the truck, and open before anything else at the new place.
- Should the open first box go on the moving truck?
- No. Keep it in your own car. A truck can be delayed or simply parked while the crew takes a break, and the whole point of the box is that you can reach it the moment you arrive.
- How many open first boxes should I pack?
- One is enough for an apartment. For a house, pack one for the kitchen and one for each bathroom in use, labeled on all four sides, so nobody has to dig through a single box to find hand soap.