Moving is a chaotic and stressful experience under the best of circumstances. Ideally, you would hire someone to do all the packing and moving for you. For those of us on a budget, we must do at least some of the work ourselves. While you may hire movers to transport your belongings physically, you’re likely still faced with the task of packing up the entire house yourself.
We recently moved from our beautiful Brooklyn brownstone into a more spacious home in the Connecticut suburbs. While we did hire a moving company for the actual moving day, I tried to have as much of the packing done before they arrived. I found the kitchen to be the most challenging room to pack, but the guys from Imperial Movers (www.imperialmovers.com) had some great tips:
1. Pack a mix of lighter and heavier things in large boxes
While large boxes can fit a lot of items in them, people often forget that at some point in time, you must move that box, which means you don’t want it to be too heavy. Even if you have movers with dollies, at some point in time, you’ll unpack and potentially rearrange what the movers move. A good rule of thumb is to not pack more weight into a single box than you can comfortably lift.
2. Use wine boxes for wine glasses
When vineyards ship wine to liquor stores, they use a special wine box that contains dividers. These boxes are perfect for packing wine glasses and other fragile glassware. There is enough room in each section to wrap glasses in bubble wrap before placing in their divided section.
3. Use shoe boxes for spices
Shoe boxes – especially large boot boxes – are ideal for spices, since they are almost the exact height of most spice jars. Pack the spices into a shoe box, cover it with the lid and then you can pack the spice box – or boxes – into a larger box for better protection.
5. Use linens and soft clothing for cushion
Packing materials can get expensive, not to mention, they create a lot of waste. Instead of just packing up a box of potholders and kitchen towels, why not use them as packing and padding for fragile items? You can even use other linens like sheets and bath towels and even soft clothing like t-shirts or pajamas.
6. Use large pots and pans to protect smaller, fragile items
If you have small, fragile items to pack like a bone china teapot or crystal salt & pepper shakers, you can wrap them in bubble wrap and then place them in a pot or pan for additional protection. You can also pack newspaper or wrapping paper in any nooks or crannies or to fill up the pan, so items don’t jostle. For smaller pans, you want to wrap and nest them to use less space.
7. Fill boxes
While you don’t want your boxes to be too heavy, you also want them to be full. Remember that boxes will be stacked on top of each other, so you want the box to be full so that it will not collapse under the weight of another box. If you’re going to put heavy items in a large box, you also want to prepare the box correctly, which you can find out how to do here.