Moving a Family of Five in Puchong: 68 Carton Boxes and a Lorry That Came Twice

A composite story built from what Puchong customers have told us at the Balakong counter and on WhatsApp. The family is invented; the box count, the lorry problem and the grandmother’s kitchen are not.

Short version: two parents, three children aged four to eleven, and a grandmother moved from a rented double-storey terrace in Bandar Puteri to a bought one in Bandar Kinrara, both in Puchong, eight kilometres apart. The distance was the easy part. The move took 68 once-used carton boxes, four weekends of packing, a mover whose 3-tonne lorry had to come back for a second load, and one long Saturday. Everyone slept in their own bed that night. Here is the whole journey, including the grandmother’s kitchen.

A move across town is still a move

Priya and Daniel had assumed that a move inside Puchong would be a small job. Same area, same schools, same mamak. They told the children it would be “one weekend”. The first weekend was spent counting.

A double-storey terrace with three bedrooms, a wet kitchen, a dry kitchen that had become the grandmother’s second kitchen, a store room under the stairs and a car porch full of bicycles is not a small job at any distance. Our guide to how many boxes a Malaysian home needs puts a landed house at 60 to 90 boxes. Priya’s count came to 70 and she ordered 72: 48 medium, 14 small, 10 large. They used 68. The guide to choosing boxes for a landed house explains why most of them should be medium, and this family found out the hard way that a large box of books cannot be carried upstairs by anyone in the house.

The grandmother’s kitchen

Every family move has one room that takes longer than all the others. In this house it was the dry kitchen, which held thirty years of the grandmother’s cooking equipment: a cabinet of serving dishes used twice a year, a drawer of ladles, three rice cookers of ascending age, and a collection of glass jars that she would not allow to be “packed by people who don’t know what is in them”.

So she packed it herself, over two evenings, with Priya wrapping. The dishes went on their edge in small boxes, a sheet of PE foam between each one, newspaper stuffed into every gap until nothing shifted when the box was shaken. The jars got bubble wrap individually and travelled in the car. Eleven boxes, every one labelled in Tamil and English, every one marked FRAGILE with the red fragile tape Priya had added to the box order on a whim. One ladle went missing. It was found in the toy box in October.

The method, for those without a grandmother, is in how to pack plates and glasses and how to pack small kitchen appliances.

Packing with three children in the house

The children’s room was packed last, in the final week, and this was deliberate. The four-year-old’s bed, blanket and a box of the current favourite toys went in the car on moving morning, not the lorry. The eleven-year-old was put in charge of the room stickers: every box got a coloured sticker for its destination room, blue for the children’s room, green for the kitchen, yellow for the master bedroom, and the movers were told the colours at the door. It cost a sheet of stickers and saved an hour of “where does this go”.

The toys followed our kids’ toys packing guide: the loose plastic went into zip bags first, then into medium boxes, and the big things, the kitchen set and the ride-on car, were taped shut and moved as they were. The bicycles went last, into the second lorry load, with stretch film around the pedals so they could not scratch the wardrobe. Our bicycle and gym equipment guide has the reason for the film.

The mover, the lorry, and the second trip

Daniel had asked three movers for a price and taken the middle one, which he was pleased about. The quote was for a 3-tonne lorry with three men, “per trip”. He had not asked how many trips. The mover had not come to look at the house.

On the Saturday the three men loaded the lorry in ninety minutes, with the beds, the wardrobes, the dining set, the fridge, the washing machine and about 40 boxes, and the lorry was full. The remaining 28 boxes, the sofa, the bicycles, the grandmother’s cabinet and the porch furniture waited for a second trip. Eight kilometres is a short trip. Unloading, driving back, and loading again is still two and a half hours, which is why the family ate lunch sitting on boxes in the new porch at three in the afternoon.

The second trip was charged as a second trip. Daniel paid it, because it was in the quote, and because the men had been careful: not one wall was scuffed, and the padding they put on the stair rail would have passed a condo management inspection. If you are choosing a mover, our lorry-size guide explains why a double-storey house is usually two 3-tonne loads or one larger lorry, and why the per-trip price is the number to ask about.

The new house’s rules

Bandar Kinrara’s gated section had a visitor system, and the lorry was registered in advance because the Bandar Puteri guardhouse had taught Priya that lesson two years earlier when the fridge was delivered. There was still a rule nobody had thought of: no lorries on the inner roads after six, because of the evening traffic of children on bicycles. The second load arrived at twenty past five. The movers finished at ten to six with the sofa, and the guard, who had been watching, said nothing.

The rental deposit on the Bandar Puteri house came back in full three weeks later. The floors were protected during the move with flattened boxes along the walkways and the stair, which is a trick from our deposit protection guide that costs nothing and saves the one scratch that gets photographed.

The first night, and the week after

The children’s room was built first, between the first lorry load and the second, while the men were away. Beds, blankets, the toy box from the car, the night light. By the time the sofa came through the door the four-year-old was asleep on his own bed in a room full of unopened blue boxes. That was, Priya told us, the point of the whole exercise.

The kitchen took the Sunday. The grandmother unpacked her eleven boxes herself, in the same order she had packed them, and declared the new dry kitchen “acceptable”. The master bedroom and the store room took the week. The last boxes, the porch and the bicycles, were opened the following Saturday.

Sixty-eight boxes flattened in one week makes a stack a metre high. Twenty of the best went into the store room for the next time. The rest went to a neighbour two doors down who was moving in November, which is the Puchong way. Our post on what to do with boxes after moving covers the other options.

What they would do differently

• Ask the mover to come and look, or send a video of every room. A quote from a photo of the living room is a guess.
• Ask how many trips, not just the price per trip. Two trips at a fair price was fine; two trips at a “cheap” price would have been the full price anyway.
• Register the lorry at both guardhouses, and ask about the time limit at the new one.
• Pack the children’s room last, build it first. It worked exactly as planned.
• Let the person who owns the kitchen pack the kitchen. It took longer and nothing broke.
• Buy the fragile tape and the stretch film with the boxes. They were used on every single day of the packing.
• Order four or five spare boxes, because the last room always has more in it than the count.

Moving in Puchong?

Once-used Grade A carton boxes start at RM1.10 at shop.quinocycle.com, delivered the next working day from our Balakong warehouse, which is about twenty minutes from Bandar Puteri, Bandar Kinrara, Puchong Jaya and Taman Putra Perdana. Delivery across KL and Selangor is free at RM300 and above and RM30 per trip below that, and bubble wrap, PE foam, packing tape and fragile tape ship in the same order. Collection from Balakong is open Monday to Friday 8.30am to 5pm and Saturday 8.30am to 1pm. Send us the number of rooms on WhatsApp at +60 16-891 6381 and we will suggest a count.

Bahasa Malaysia readers: kotak pindah Puchong.