Trunk or Suitcase for Boarding School

They all use cases at my dd school.
in fact if you are taking them, you just fill the car up.
I go in and make the bed, just to help, they normally do their own beds and some laundry. Dd hangs her clothes, in between hugging other random people and speaking very quickly
Done in about 30 mins.

Both my DC, at different schools, take suitcases, but DS's has to live in his room so it's a soft large duffel bag with wheels kind of thing. DD takes suitcases and they store them so she takes ones that can fit inside each other, which also means that she has a small one for exeat and half term when clothes must be swapped (apparently). And for a DD forget 3-4 changes of clothes!!! They take lots and you and the kit list have little say in the matter. DD even took in a 6' Christmas Tree last year. Most schools don't do trunks anymore as so many children travel by plane or train. But email your HM they will tell you and be pleased you asked. A lockable tuck box is always a good idea.

My son's school states suitcase, no trunks, and weekend bag for exeats etc. I think they are quite short on storage space in his house particularly, and we will find out in a week if what I'm sending him with is too big ... if it is I will certainly offer to bring it home and take a case back near the end of term as appropriate. My daughter has always had a suitcase (plus weekend bag, backpack, assorted plastic bags etc!). Thinking about it, at prep school the case on its own was generally enough, it's only at senior school that she's had enough non-uniform time for her casual clothes to multiply :)

Suitcases are easier to manage than trunks. Thinking practically, you will need to be able to carry your own luggage from airport/station to the school and within the school to your own room and then to the luggage storage room.

You will need a suitcase for exeats, weekends with friends, school trips and half terms anyway.

The few students who started out with trunks when DD started boarding in Y7 ditched them pretty quickly. Now she is going into Y11 no-one has them.

DS is starting Y7 this year and I have bought him wheeled hold-all shaped suitcases. These are good for travelling on overseas school trips are they fit into luggage spaces easily and when unpacked can be stored under beds.

For my DS we used a big wheeled suitcase, but we had to unpack straightaway so I could bring it back home.

Thank you marants! I have been educated!

The key is storage. If they have trunk storage, trunks are best. John Lewis used to sell them. My DDs used them as coffee tables too!

No girl ever sticks to 4 changes of clothes! As if!

I’m an assistant Housemistress in a boarding school. We would love to bring back the trunk, but at the moment there is no storage other than in girls’ rooms, so soft bags are the way to go. Some girls have their parents take away some of the cases/boxes and bring back early at the end of term.
You really need to ask. Email the Housemistress, she’ll be on alert by now!

www.tuckonline.com/products/school-kit/

Not knowing anything about boarding schools but having stumbled across this thread, this sounds like something out of the 1930s!
Now it's been pointed out, I can well see the storage practicalities, but am amazed that trunks even still exist. Where on Earth do you buy them from? If anyone would be kind enough to post a link or picture I would be pleased to see what they're like!

Suitcases are fine. No need to buy a trunk.

4 changes of clothes? That’s less than a week!

My school had lots of students from overseas and they had huge trunks shipped. School was their home for years. The trunks would often stay and their stuff packed into it in summer hols whilst rooms were cleaned and reallocated and then unpacked and sorted on return. If a student didn’t return it was ready for shipping. New clothes and belongings were brought in as necessary. Hundreds of suitcases would have been chaos!

I think you'll need to contact the school and see what they recommend.

We've had dc at 4 boarding schools and 2 of them asked for trunks and 2 asked for soft suitcases

We do a suitcase, a very large hold-all (that fits inside suitcase once empty) and assorted bags eg ikea, suitcarrier etc. Fills the boot of our people carrier and some! Never seen trunks

You need to ask the school. Friend works in one. They like small squashable bags as storage is limited. They say only bring 3 or 4 sets of clothes.
Others will have rooms to stack the kind of wheely suitcase people go on holiday with. I’d email and ask.

Laundry bags are good

Suitcases!

At my daughter's boarding school it was trunks and they had somewhere special to store them. At my son's
, it is soft bags to store in bedroom. No trunks allowed. Call the school and check

We had trunks at my school.

At the start and end of every term we had to 'do trunks' which was forming a human chain from the ground floor to the basement and passing the trunks along to (or from) storage.

Trunk was then useful in my first term at university as an extra table!

Girls have so much more stuff than boys though!!! I didn’t supply mine with bin bags.

Mine started with the regulation trunk. By the time he finished it all went in and out in black bin bags. Much easier to shove in the car and it's not like he ever packed it neatly in the trunk. Was always just shoved in. Most people seemed to use bin bags (Eton). I appreciate this is not the impression you want to make on first day in the House though!

We had the trunk lined with two blankets. Each blanket contained half the contents and you took that up the stairs. The trunk stayed in the corridor. When empty, the trunk went to loft storage in school. As they are flat they can be piled on top of one another. Suitcases were only allowed for international students who flew in. They don’t stack.

We had sack barrows to wheel the trunks from the car to the corridor and young men to help out. No problem at all. Buy your own trunk and barrow. I’m not sure where you get the young men from!

I don't know how you would get all your stuff in with suitcases. My trunk probably stored six suitcases worth...??? Cost a lot more also!

He's an adult.... let him figure it out for himself