The kitchen is the room that makes people give up on packing. It's the most stuff, the most fragile stuff, and the one room you still need to use the night before you move. After doing deliveries all over Ventura County, we can tell you the difference between a smooth kitchen pack and a stressful one usually comes down to order of operations — not how much bubble wrap you bought.
Start two weeks out with the "we won't miss it" shelf
Every kitchen has 60% of its contents that nobody touches in a given month: the waffle iron, the big serving platters, the second set of mixing bowls, the holiday dishes. Pack those first, in their own totes, and label them KITCHEN — SLOW. They can go straight to the back of the truck and the back of the garage.
What's left is your working kitchen, and it fits in far fewer totes than you'd guess. That's the part you pack in the last 48 hours.
Plates go on their side, never stacked flat
This is the single biggest thing people get wrong. A flat stack of plates puts all the weight on the bottom plate and every bump on the 101 travels straight down through it. Stand plates on edge, like records in a crate, with a dish towel or a sheet of packing paper between each one. On edge, a plate is enormously strong. Flat, it's a cracker.
- Plates and platters: vertical, padded between, tote bottom.
- Bowls: nested in threes with paper between, then set upright.
- Glasses and stemware: upright, never on their side, in the top layer with towels wedged around them so nothing shifts.
- Cast iron and small appliances: bottom layer, centered — heavy things belong low and in the middle.
Our totes hold up to 65 lbs, which is more than you want to lift with a full load of dishes. Fill kitchen totes about three-quarters, then top off with linens. A half-empty tote is where breakage happens, because contents slide.
Use your soft goods as packing material
You are already moving dish towels, oven mitts, hand towels, and t-shirts. Every one of those is free padding you don't have to buy, unwrap, or throw away later. Between that and a couple of moving blankets, most families never need to buy a roll of bubble wrap.
For anything genuinely irreplaceable — a wedding china set, a grandmother's serving bowl — wrap it individually in paper first, then pad. Everything else, soft goods are plenty.
The pantry: purge, then bag
Moving day is the best forced pantry cleanout you'll ever get. Toss anything expired, and set aside unopened non-perishables to drop at the Food Share of Ventura County or a local food pantry on your way out.
What's left: put anything that can leak, spill, or attract ants into sealed zip bags before it goes in a tote — flour, sugar, rice, open spice jars, oils. Liquids like olive oil and vinegar get their own small tote with a towel underneath, and they ride upright in the car if you can manage it.
Pack one "first night" tote and keep it with you
Do not bury this one. It rides in your car, and it holds:
- Coffee setup: maker, filters, grounds, two mugs. Non-negotiable.
- Plates and utensils for everyone in the house, plus a knife and a can opener.
- Paper towels, trash bags, dish soap, a sponge.
- One pan and a spatula.
Everybody who skips this tote ends up eating takeout off a cardboard flat at 10pm. It takes ten minutes to pack and it saves the whole first night.
Label the side, not the lid
When totes are stacked, you can't see lids. Write on the short side: room, and one detail — "KITCHEN — glasses, fragile" beats "KITCHEN." When you're unloading in the dark in Camarillo after a long day, that detail is what keeps the fragile tote off the bottom of the stack.
Roughly how many totes does a kitchen take?
For most Ventura County homes we deliver to:
- Studio / 1-bedroom: 4–6 totes for the whole kitchen.
- 2-bedroom: 7–10 totes.
- 3–4 bedroom family kitchen: 12–18 totes, especially with a stocked pantry and small appliances.
If you want the whole-home math instead of just the kitchen, we broke it down in how many moving boxes you actually need.
Why we'd rather you use totes here than cardboard
The kitchen is exactly where cardboard fails. Boxes get soft at the bottom from a heavy load, tape gives out under a stack, and one damp garage floor turns a box of dishes into a bad afternoon. Our totes have rigid walls, real handles, and stack square without crushing whatever's underneath — which matters most in the room with the breakables.
Every rental includes free delivery and pickup anywhere in Ventura County, a dolly, and a one-week rental window (extend for $20/day for the first 3 days, then $12/day (10-day max) if the move drags). We drop them off, you pack, we come get them — no flattening, no recycling run, no cardboard mountain in the driveway.
We're your neighbors
805 Totes is a family business serving Thousand Oaks, Oxnard, Ventura, Camarillo, Simi Valley, Moorpark, and Santa Paula. If you're not sure how many totes your kitchen needs, call us at (805) 273-8732 — we'd rather talk it through than have you over-order.