Chess Blog

Tips For Packing And Moving Fragile Items

Tips For Packing And Moving Fragile Items

Moving house can be stressful enough without worrying about breakages during transit. Here are our top tips for ensuring your valuables survive moving day. 

1. Careful planning

Devote a few weeks or more to your packing - packing up all your fragile items piece by piece may seem time consuming but treating valuables carefully and individually is your best insurance against breakages. Invest the time and energy for careful planning and packing – it’ll pay dividends the other end.

2. Be prepared

Get hold of the right supplies. Choosing the best materials for the job means using the best quality boxes, packing tape, bubble wrap and packing paper you can afford. Choose boxes of different sizes to suit your goods, and investing in speciality boxes (for lamps, musical instruments, hats etc) can be worth the additional cost. Add in additional cushioning and protection for fragile items by buying inflatable bags, foam and foam peanuts for your packing boxes.

3. Create a clear space

Keeping a table free for packing at standing or sitting height will help reduce accidents during packing. It’s surprising how many items break before your move and/or during packing.

4. Get packing

Protecting your favourite things is easy – when you know how.

  • Wrapping small items individually – Using individual layers of packing paper, newspaper or bubble wrap to protect each item is essential. For example, when packing plates, wrap each plate carefully in paper, place in the box, then repeat with the next plate. For glasses, for example, fill the glass with tissue paper before wrapping the whole glass carefully. When packing large precious and odd shaped items remember to protect corners, handles and any items which could be knocked and easily broken or damaged in transit.
  • Protecting specialty items – Wrap your speciality items in bubble wrap, securing tightly with tape. Put into an empty box and carefully pack cushioning materials around the item, making sure nothing can move around. Seal the box and don’t forget to mark it fragile.
  • Packing odd shaped items – Paying particular attention to odd shaped belongings, such as lamps, certainly pays off. Where possible take the item apart, i.e. separating the lamp shade and base, and wrap each part carefully in bubble wrap. Make sure you pay careful attention to anything that could cause damage or shatter – such as plugs, light bulbs etc.
  • Stack boxes carefully – After packing fragile items, don’t stack their boxes on top of each other, but keep them singularly on the floor. Mark the boxes clearly with a FRAGILE label and store them together in a separate space, away from your other packing boxes until moving day.
  • Don’t be tempted to use old towels – or old clothing, for example, to wrap valuables. Whilst these objects make great fillers for your other boxes containing non-fragile gear, they’re not good for protecting your breakables as their materials can’t easily be taped secure and can slip off during transit.

5. Talk to your removalists

Informing your movers about which boxes are fragile will allow them to take extra care when packing the truck when you move house. Always minimise damage by employing professionally trained packers and movers.

Comments

Add a Comment
Input Verification To help us avoid spam, please enter the text exactly as you see it in the image below. If your text doesn't match the image, you'll be able to try again with a different image.
Load a different image
Submit Form
Back to top