Packing Fragile Items for Moving and Storage

Moving to a different location means that you need to uproot yourself from one place to another. It is not an easy task even if you are moving only one part of the house (your room, for example, if you are a college student or sharing an apartment with friends or other people) or the entire house. You draw up a list to get things moving from sorting out your items, throwing or giving away what you do not need and planning on whether to put these for storage for a while or deliver the items right at your new doorstep. We would rely on our movers to help us pack, load and deliver for storage, but there are a few things that we need to do on our own, and one of these is to handle our fragile items.

What should you do when you have fragile items at home and would like to move or store these somewhere?

1. Put fragile items in categories

There is no better way to start handling your fragile items but knowing what these are and sorting them according to how you would like these to be handled. You may put them in a spectrum of super fragile to the not-so-super fragile items. With this, you would be able to know what kind of packing materials that you should have and how to pack these, too. Putting these into categories would also mean easier for you to pack and label these for better handling.

2. Premium services offered by storage and movers

Some storage and movers businesses would offer premium services that would include handling fragile items by providing packing materials, packing and loading/unloading these to your new location or at the storage area. Some fragile items require some airflow and temperature controlled room, thus, you may want to check these out with your service provider. If you do not have a lot of these items, you may secure a mobile storage pod and have it stored at a common area where they keep fragile items. Most households don’t have a lot of fragile items and they would usually seek storage providers that may take economies of scale, i.e. have a common area for all fragile items. This option may be easier on your pocket, too.

3. Recycling old clothing items

If you have the not-so-fragile items but are still considered as fragile, you may look at the option of handling these yourself. However, you may be running out of bubble wraps that you have purchased at a local store. Thus, one way to do it is to use old thick clothing items like cardigans, shirts or even towels to use as a wrap and provide support in boxes. But if you do this, make sure that you label the boxes accordingly in case you would think that the box would just contain old clothing and may mishandle the box entirely.

4. Old newspapers, anyone?

Just like old clothing, you can use old newspapers to provide support on the sides and bottoms of boxes. You can crumple these like round balls to stick to corners of boxes for support and even in empty spaces between fragile items. Crumpled old newspapers would also not add up too much weight on your boxes for easy handling.

5. Packing lightly

One cardinal rule of packing fragile items is to pack the boxes lightly so that it is easier for you to carry. If you stack a lot of these in one box, you might end up with a heavy load and may not be able to handle it properly. It is not only applicable to fragile items but boxes that contain valuable items that you intend to handle yourself. Movers are used to carrying and shuttling boxes back and forth, but for a novice like you, you might want to take it easy on your hands and back. 

How To Transport Potted Plants Safely

Moving can be easy if everything is planned. It is good to have a checklist of the activities that need to be accomplished and require some time to be done. However, we are prone to oversight and might forget some items and one of these are potted plants.

If you have a green thumb, you will have the tendency to have many potted plants in the kitchen, living room and even in your balcony. Some may be big while some will be of small sizes, usually applicable to herbs that you can find in the kitchen. So, what do you do with these? You can’t just put them in storage boxes and leave them inside a storage unit. There are some plants that are sensitive to the amount of water and sunlight that they would just wilt and die too soon. Thus, how do move, store and transport potted plants?

1. Prepare a checklist of the number and kinds of potted plants that you have

You can list and identify your potted plants and arrange them in your list from most sensitive or delicate to the non-delicate ones. Once you are done, you can pack these the last among your items, and prioritize the non-sensitive first then followed by the non-delicate potted plants. Usually herbs would come as the last as these are small and flimsy.

2. Seek a storage specialist that supply storage boxes with holes and handles for easy moving

Some movers would have storage boxes that have holes in order to provide some flow of air. These boxes are usually easier to life with side handles. Storage boxes with holes are perfect for your potted plants.

3. Save the old boxes

If you can’t find any movers that could supply storage boxes with holes, you might want to use the old boxes you can salvage from your storage room. If these are too thick to bore some holes all over, then don’t close the top to allow some flow of air.

4. Old newspapers to secure the plants and refrain them from moving

Gather as many as old newspapers to help secure the potted plants and refrain these from moving while being transported. Old newspapers will also provide protection for your other items in case the soil are thrown all over during the move.

5. For big potted plants, allocate some space in the truck

You might want to alert your movers that you have big potted plants that they can allocate some space in their truck. You neither can stack items on top of plants nor put them on top of storage boxes.

6. Label your boxes that contain potted plants

Even if you can see your plants through the holes, it is still best to label these and list these down on your notebook for easy tracking and which box goes to which part of the house. This habit actually goes to all boxes that you are going to transport, not just only the boxes that contain your potted plants.