A few things I’ve adopted over the years:
*Put all clothes that are going to be hung up onto their hangers, tie the hangers together at the top, pull them up through a giant hefty garbage bag and poke the top of the hangers through the top, and tie the end closed. All you have to do is stick them in the closet instead of unpacking them.
*Ikea has inexpensive giant blue heavy duty bags with great long handles, you can get tons of bulky stuff into them, they are super easy to stack in your car, and to lug into the dorm. Then you can just crunch them up to take home. Make great laundry bags too.
*Instead of taking bookcases, take either plastic shelves you easily assemble, or we use black wire cubes that we zipcord together in the corners to make cubes for food or shoes etc. They fold up flat in your car. Takes a few minutes to put together, but not bad.
*Pack towels in your refrigerator, clothes in your garbage can…use every bit of space. Take things like food and toiletries out of boxes and condense.
*Use saran wrap to wrap around things that might open in transit, like laundry hampers, refrigerator doors, storage drawers. Then you can just slice it off when you get there, super fast. DON’T use packing tape, it will be hot and might adhere to your items!
*Because I swear it is the hottest day of the year on move in day (no matter when your moving day is, not matter where you are!) take a box fan and plug it in first thing!!
I have two moving in the on same day this year at different colleges in different directions, wish me luck!!