Renting plastic boxes is an economical and eco-friendly solution that makes packing and moving easier than ever before.
Moving Tips: Cardboard Boxes Vs. Plastic Crates
Go Green: Elephant Trunk Moving Supplies Provides a Reusable Alternative to Moving Boxes
The concept really is brilliant. Elephant Trunk Moving Supplies rents out reusable plastic moving boxes for two weeks at a time. Simply go to their website to order a one-, two-, up to a five-bedroom package of reusable plastic boxes. Usually, John Hancock himself will deliver the stacks of nested boxes and labels to your door within most cities in the Metroplex. They also rent out all the other stuff you’d need for moving like dollies, hand trucks, blankets, and packing paper.
Elephant Trunk Enlightenment
I’m in the van a lot, most often by myself, and besides lip synching to lonesome-themed songs I think some. And what I’m thinking about lately is how our customers are enlightened, but not only to the extent that they are aware of a concept of which not so many are aware - that of using reusable boxes and products to move - but also of their load.
Packing & Moving is a Family Affair
Moving is never easy, but making it a team effort helps quite a bit! One of our favorite anecdotes from a customer was that they had their Elephant Trunk moving crates delivered and their teenage daughter grabbed a box and started packing without even being asked! Imagine, that could be your experience!
All packed up in the Elephant Trunk box and ready for the new house!
Tips for Getting Family Motivated to Pack
Make it a game! Who can pack the most drawers in the kitchen the fastest?
Set time frames - we’ll pack for this one song, then dance party during the next! Pack boxes for 30 minutes, play a game for 15 minutes!
Find a fun audiobook or podcast that the whole family wants to listen to and ONLY listen to it while packing! Or individual audiobooks/podcasts specifically listened to while packing
Plan something fun for after - a special meal out, go see a movie, go window shop for furniture for the new place!
There is no perfect science, but find what motivates your family and find ways to spend quality time together during it! Moving is stressful for everyone involved, kids included. Possibly changing schools, having to make new friends, learn a new house, so the motivation to pack up and head into that great unknown can be difficult. Make it fun, make it exciting, use it as an opportunity to make memories!
And with Elephant Trunk moving bins, you don’t have to worry about assembly, going to pick up boxes and tape, or disposing of the boxes after the move is done! Your family can easily grab the boxes, pack them, and close them up themselves!
As a family-owned and operated business, who better to get advice from on working together as a family!?
Happy packing!
Packing Tips With Instant Gratification
Obviously most aspects of moving are not fun at ALL - at least not until you’re in the new space and get to settle in and really make it your own. But packing honestly feels the most tedious of all - and requires so much thought and can lead to serious decision fatigue. Should you put all the bathroom stuff in one box, or pack based on categories in each room? What about the small stuff? What about the big stuff? It’s just a lot.
Well, these tips are intended to help you feel like you got a lot done without a lot of thought or effort. These are also great steps if you’re putting your house on the market and need to start pre-packing.
1. Pack Books
An empty bookcase will make you feel like there’s nothing left to do, the satisfaction after packing up books is so great. And a great thing about the Elephant Trunk moving boxes is that they don’t have to be taped closed, so if you packed something into a container that you didn’t mean to pack, or you made the box too heavy, you can easily pull it out and reorganize!
If you have an organizing system for your books, be sure to reference it somehow on the label. Whether you label by genre or label by what the bookcase looks like. Streamline your unpacking and do your future self a favor by specifying what needs to go where.
If an empty bookcase doesn’t feel like a HUGE win, well then just go to the next tip!
2. Pack Half of your Clothes (At Least)
If you’re selling your home & your Realtor didn’t tell you this before listing… well now I am telling you! Pack all your out-of-season clothes, special occasion clothes, “goal” clothes (we all have them), and maybe take this opportunity to clear out clothes you haven’t worn in a long time! Large Elephant Trunk packing boxes are perfect for clothes because they won’t get too heavy to carry if you’re moving yourself.
Vacuum bags are also a great option, especially for storing out of season clothes after the move!
This also goes for shoes, coats, accessories, anything that you’re not wearing between now and after your move you probably do not need to take up space in your closet anymore! And if you’re listing your house the added bonus is that it shows way better to potential buyers with less stuff clogging the space.
3. Pack Your Linen Closet
Extra towels, extra sheets, extra comforters, the keyword here is EXTRA. You do not need those things at this time when you are getting ready to move! You may have to do a little more laundry, but have way less stuff to pack in the future!
4. Pack Special Occasion Items
Just like how you don’t need any special occasion clothes hanging in your closet, you don’t need any special occasion serving dishes or holiday decor taking up space in your kitchen or storage closet or attic!
Now is a great time to pack your china cabinet, maybe leave the display items out (minimize wherever possible), but you can pack all the extra dishes, serving bowls, steak knives, and anything in the drawers and cabinets. We provide a great wrap to protect your dishes, as well as a quilted glassware storage case, and you can use newspaper in your recycle bin if you have any!
Any wreaths that are not in use, seasonal decorations, and anything you don’t plan to use in the next month or so while moving can definitely be packed up first.
Those are our top tips for packing that will give you some instant gratification - just a little dose of serotonin in a process that is not easy on anyone. Although, something that makes all moving experiences easier is Elephant Trunk! Be sure to check out our rentable moving boxes that can be delivered right to your door, that don’t require assembly, and make pre-packing a little less committal. Click here to take a look at our products and prices! And don’t forget to check out our reviews if you’re not totally sold!
Elephant Trunk Moving Supplies - New Product Photos
As you all know, we are a small family-owned business. Our original product photos when we first started were taken at our home, and the next set of product photos were taken at our storage facility by Chloe (the daughter of the family business). A few months ago we finally went pro-style and rented a studio (shoutout to the Lumen Room in Dallas!) and hired our favorite photographer Sarah Fun (she took the photos at our house, too) and ended up with some amazing new pictures of all of our products! Every bedroom package, dolly, wrap, even some pictures of us!
As a small business with three big opinion-filled visionaries, we went back and forth about a lot of aspects of this photoshoot - but boy are we all ecstatic with how all the thought and planning paid off! You can see all of our product shots on our order page - in case you feel like doing some gawking! We took new pictures of each bedroom package, of our wrap (which is fully recyclable!), of the blankets (which are made of recycled materials), all four of our dollies (the dual hand/platform truck, the box dolly, the flat dolly, and the shoulder dolly) the quilted glassware storage case, and the wardrobe.
This was a very exciting step for us! We would love to hear what you all think of our new photos!
And if you are ever in the market for a photographer for anything (products, weddings, headshots, graduation, parties, truly ANYTHING) look no further than Sarah Fun! She is so incredibly talented - she also designed our logo!
Of course, if you are in need of moving supplies for a local Dallas-Fort Worth move then we encourage you to look no further than Elephant Trunk Moving Supplies! We have pro-style photos now! Our rentable moving boxes and supplies make every move easier and more efficient with or without professional movers on top. We will happily deliver your bedroom package and moving accessories right to your door, give you time to pack (or have them packed), move (or have them moved), and unpack the boxes and then we will come to whisk them away and you don’t have to worry about breaking down cardboard after the move or finding a poor sap to give the boxes to!
5 Moving Tips for Maintaining Sanity
As you know, our mission is to make the moving process less stressful! So I have compiled a few tips for moving that are focused on maintaining your sanity while moving. Because that is usually easier said than done!
This is a serene image to emphasize how stress free your move could be!
Order Elephant Trunk
So I want to get the OBVIOUS out of the way first. Our moving boxes and supplies are the best stress reducers in the moving process! You don’t have to go pick them up, and you can order them from the comfort of your home over the phone or online. The boxes are delivered to your door, no assembly is required, and once you are finished unpacking we come and whisk them away! How is that not stress-reducing and amazing? We are in no way biased here.
Color Coding
I highly recommend getting different colored sharpies for labeling! Use one color for living space, one color for the kitchen, one color for each kid’s room, et cetera et cetera! You can tell your movers what the colors represent so they can be sure to put the boxes in the correct space, and you’re not shuffling boxes around for a week after you’ve moved in. Some people use different colored tape on their cardboard boxes - but since ya don’t need tape with Elephant Trunk you don’t need to worry about buying 12 different colored rolls of tape for the color coding!
Pack a Day-of-Move Bag or Box
This is CRITICAL. Think of it like an overnight bag - what would you need if you were going to be “away from home” for 24 hours? You can even plan it like a camping overnight bag if that makes it more real for you. Include all of your toiletries, changes of clothing, minor cleaning supplies, food and snacks, chargers, backup batteries, and any needed work items you can’t be apart from so that you’re not frantically ripping boxes open in search of. The list goes on, but think about it like you’re going to be away from home, and you can’t exist without these items! Oh - and scissors. Put scissors in here. You’ll need them.
Schedule Eating & Set Reminders to Drink Water
These things might sound obvious - they are not. Do them. Plan when and where and what you are going to eat for the WHOLE moving day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Hunger is too real to risk dealing with that on top of everything else you are juggling on moving day. Try to make one of the meals a treat for yourself and everyone involved. No one at the restaurant cares if you look crazy and worn down for dinner if that’s how you show up! And if you’re moving in Texas there’s a 60% chance you’re moving in unbearable heat, and you will be dehydrated! Hydrating is good.
5. Budget for Movers
So I know this might not be what you want to hear, but you probably know a few months before you are going to be moving, and you should use that time to plan for the move. That should include saving some money for what’s going to be necessary when the move occurs and saving to hire movers. Even if they’re just to move the big stuff - like appliances and your mattress - it will be SO nice to not have to handle that yourself. The physical exertion of it, the concern you’re going to break your washing machine, sweating all over your mattress that you forgot to cover with plastic. Imagine only having to maneuver a dolly to and from the moving truck - how nice could that be? If you have stairs and no elevator I cannot recommend movers for this enough. I have done my fair share of third floor moves without an elevator and it is not pretty.
I hope this has been helpful for you & I wish you a stress-reduced move! Because let’s be honest - weird stuff comes up on moving day and somehow things go wrong and you can only prepare so much. But I’m tellin’ ya - doing these things to prepare for the move will bring you some great peace.
Our Mission Statement
Elephant Trunk Moving Supplies aims to make the moving process less stressful and more environmentally conscientious with rentable moving supplies.
From left to right: Mollie Hancock, John Hancock, and Chloe Hancock
And I wanna tell you a little more about us!
We are coming up on our five-year anniversary (August 1st - woohoo!), and I thought now would be a great time to tell you a little more about us, where we started, and what we aspire to be.
First off - if you have not read our article in Plano Magazine - I highly recommend ya do! And I am not biased in making this suggestion, I don’t think! It’s a quick read and gives some direct quotes from one of our owners - Mollie - and her inspiration that started it all.
We are a family-owned and operated business - if ya didn’t know! We are not a franchise, though we did get the idea from a company in Canada called Frog Box. We asked them if they wanted to franchise here in Texas, but they were not interested. So we decided we could do it ourselves! We connected with a friend of mine (longtime friend - we were in Girl Scouts together) and asked her to design a logo for us, take some photos of our products, and create a website for us! We are eternally grateful to her, see more of her work here! Her name is Sarah Fun and we are big fans of hers at Elephant Trunk.
We started the business with a blue F-150 - not the lovely wrapped van you see around town now. We had a few hiccups with that and finally were told by a friend that we NEEDED a van to be “pro-style” (as John would say).
We have grown a LOT in these five years, and we are excited for the many more anniversaries to come! We so appreciate everyone’s support of us and our mission. Your reviews, you guys telling every person you meet about us - that really means a lot and it helps us so much! We may be almost five years old at this point, but we are still a very new concept and one a lot of people haven’t heard of! So keep on spreading the good word!
A Review of our Reviews
In our four and a half years of business, we have accumulated 51 Google reviews (5/5 Stars), 25 Facebook recommendations (5.0/5 Rating), and 15 Yelp reviews (5/5 Stars)! If you feel so inclined to leave us a review on any of those platforms we would so appreciate it!
So I thought I would highlight some of the things people have said about us, our service, and our rentable moving boxes!
The Boxes
“Their boxes come in different sizes and are in excellent, clean condition!” - Christine
“These boxes are far superior to cardboard.” - Mike
“I was able to pack my items with confidence and not having to worry if I packed too much weight or if my items will get crushed from boxes on top. The crates were extremely sturdy, hold a lot, and stack so neatly.” - Aimee
“The boxes are great quality, stack easily, and save you the hassle of taping and cutting a bunch of boxes.” - Danielle
Elephant Trunk & Movers
“The movers were able to move them very quickly in large stacks and they organized neatly into the truck.” - Stephanie
“Our customers love that they are eco friendly, affordable, reusable, and no tape! Our movers love how fast they are to load and move. Win-Win!” - Wildcat Movers
“I am convinced renting bins paid for itself since the movers were able to load and unload quicker and we didn’t have to buy tape and cardboard boxes.” - Amanda
The Elephant Trunk Experience
“Elephant Trunk Moving delivers your boxes to your home and picks them up when you are done on your schedule.” - James
“We used a four bedroom package to move from one four bedroom house to another, and the number of crates was almost exactly right.” - Eric
“I do not want to move again, but if I do then I would definitely use them again in the future.” - T
“From beginning to end, this was ridiculously simple and convenient.” - Carolyn
“Awesome business, amazing idea, great customer service, great value, good for the planet, much better than cardboard boxes!!!” - Adriana