How to pack books for moving

The smallest box in the pile. Paper is one of the densest things in a house, and a large carton filled with books becomes something nobody can lift safely and the bottom seam cannot hold. A book box is roughly a foot and a half square for a reason. If all you have is a large box, fill the bottom third with books and the rest with pillows or bedding.

Flat in stacks, or standing with the spine against the bottom of the box. Never standing on the fore-edge, which is the open side opposite the spine. On the fore-edge the weight of the text block pulls away from the binding, and over weeks in storage the covers splay and never close flat again. Flat is the safest for anything old, oversized or leather-bound.

Wrap anything with a dust jacket, a loose spine or real age in packing paper before it joins the box, so covers cannot rub against each other. Acid-free tissue is worth it for anything genuinely old, because ordinary paper transfers over long storage. Slide a sheet of card against the inside walls of the box so no cover sits directly against damp cardboard.

Fill by weight rather than to the brim. A good test is to lift the box a few inches before you seal it: if you shift your grip or brace your back, take books out. Tape the base of every book box with a second strip across the seam and a third along each edge, since the base is where a book box fails and it fails while somebody is carrying it.

Pack shelf by shelf and label each box with the shelf it came from rather than the room. Books come off a wall in an order that took years to build, and the order is the part that is expensive to recreate. Photograph each shelf before you empty it. Reshelving then follows the photographs, and boxes can be opened in any sequence without losing the arrangement.

Boxes too heavy to carry, and boxes stored where the floor is damp. Cardboard wicks moisture upward from a concrete garage or basement floor, and paper takes it from the cardboard, so books at the bottom of a stack cockle even when nothing was ever spilled. Keep boxes off bare concrete on a pallet or a board, and never store books in a sealed plastic bin without something to absorb moisture.