We moved ourselves and later my parents out of CA. Using a grab bag of rental trucks and trailers and storage lockers at both ends for various reasons.
Not wanting to parade around with boxes labeled 'my valuable stuff is in here' and knowingly violating the storage companies' rules on ammunition, we used a simple letter code that wound up looking like Element symbols. Big letter for the room / space, subtext letter for what it was. 'GA' 'Garage-Arsenal'
And since we were packing and moving ourselves, we put most of the heavy stuff in the smallest boxes it would fit in, and odd-shaped things were buffered and the unused space filled with lightweight items.
In this way we were able to keep like items together without much thinking about it and as mentioned above, where there's helpers it's easy to tell them 'all the 'K' boxes by the kitchen'
Last, an 'essentials' box or three, stuff you must have the first night in the new place. That's bathing, clothes, even foodstuffs and whatever it takes to make you effective the next day.
Above all, get rid of as much stuff as you can BEFORE you move. Not after you've tried to stuff everything into a smaller house.
One of our first trailer trips to our new city was a lot of boxes of books, ammo, a full gun safe. The safe went right into my friend's garage and basically stayed there for almost 6mos, hidden in a false facade of a large garment box with a medium box on top, labeled 'grandma's clothes' and 'bedding'.
We decluttered and 'safed' our house before putting it on the market, moved a lot of stuff out. We started this in July. Various misadventures in real estate, we finalyl cleared out of our old house and into our new house right before Christmas. This meant most of our winter clothing was buried in the deep back of a large storage locker. And would be there the rest of winter as we started major cleanup and renovation of our 'new' house - and promptly both came down with early covid (25mos ago). I was hospitalized with it but never intubated.
Anyway, it took a long time to go thru those boxes and unpack and I wish we got rid of more stuff before we moved.
My folks elected to also move just a few months into our own place, so that summer we were renovating their newly purchased house before ours was even finished. And they got rid of absolutely nothing. Practically hoarders, albeit minus the trash. Lifetimes of goods and valuables and decor and crystal and artwork. And that too was a moving nightmare.
here we are, mostly done, still have a volkswagen-sized pile of boxes in our garage, but we bought a 3car. Mostly books, heirloom furniture, business records that need to be culled. Nothing in storage lockers.
My folks, over a year later, still up to their ears in boxes, two storage lockers here in town. Still refusing to get rid of anything as my mother fumbles around with four fewer rooms and 40% of the closet space she used to have.
It's hard to have any more patience or tolerance for it. I wrecked my health and came damned close to shoulder-rolling a 16' cab-over box van on the highway when the front left tire blew up at 65mph. Ill-fitting boots tore my feet up during their packout and after their move-in I wound up having to have a toe amputated. So congrats, folks, you saved a little money not hiring movers, broke OUR backs, and now I can only count to 20!
Like others stated..treat em good, they'll take care of it. Was really a fun job. The good far outweighed the bad. A good crew can get in a rhythm and kick ***. Ask what kind of music they like and have it going inside. If possible...no kids or pets around.