Firstly I would recommend that you find out about houselhold(self) storage container facilities in your local area or removal companies that have a self storage facility.
For a start they will povide cartons, rolls of bubblewrap and masking tape in large quantities at a reasonable price. For example I have put a website for one in my local area that I used for 2 months:
http://www.dainton.com/index.asp?section=home
I packed up my own stuff but used a local small removal company to take to storage and then out of storage when settled. This included beds and other furniture. The advantage of doing this is that one has a key to the container unit and stuff can be got at as required.
Containers come in many rentable sizes and you may be very surprised at just how much you really have. Therefore as you will probably be moving into rented but furnished accommodation you may not have much space into which to store things.
On a monetary side don't forget that all the time you are not paying for your new property you can use the interest on the unexpended loan to cover such things as removal and storage.
By not looking for a space in a rented property to put your belongings leaves you the flexibilty of not having to pay rent
for a larger property and this saving in rent may very well to pay for the storage facility.
I personally feel that self storage gives a lot more flexibility and choice of times of removal.