I was faced with moving a lot of hanging clothes on my move from Los Angeles to San Antonio. Since everything had to fit in my car, I had serious limitations on how much I could bring. Moreover, packing suits and dress shirts in boxes would end up in a bunch of wrinkled clothes.
I found this post on instructables.com entitled “how to pack clothes for moving.” The author suggests using plastic trash bags. Now although I generally liked the idea, it seemed too difficult to get the proper amount of hanging clothes in the bag and some part of the clothes might stick out the bottom. I also thought that they would be sliding all over the place and get wrinkled anyways.
Then I remembered that whenever I used a professional moving company, they would wrap everything in plastic wrap. (They’d probably wrap my dog if I had one and wasn’t looking ;-) It dawned on me that plastic wrap would solve all of the limitations of using trash bags. One, you could wrap just about any amount of hanging clothes; two, it will accomorate any length; and three, plastic wrap would not be as slippery as trash bags (in fact, it can be down-right sticky).
I used Zip Ties to hold the top of the hangers together. The instructables.com article has a suggestion to use masking tape, but I felt that it would leave a residue. One of the comments suggested Zip Ties and that worked like a charm.
Obviously, if I was going to use a moving company, I would spring for wardrobe boxes, but for this situation, plastic wrap was perfect, simple and cheap!
UPDATE 2015-06-21:
Buy the wrap at the dollar store. Also, I didn’t put it on too thick so a roll goes a long way. I don’t think I used more than a roll for all that is pictured. An added benefit is that they cling together and won’t slide around in the car.
great idea..I will try this out!! Thanks