If you have plans to move home in the New Year, you may find Christmas is not the ideal time for some aspects of the planning. After all, in decorating your home you will have been taking things out of boxes, not putting them in.
However, there is one way in which you can start making preparations now, which is by ordering in the right packaging so that when the time does come for you to pack, you will be well-equipped to do so.
This can involve getting items you might not have thought of, like foam-lined boxes for relatively small items. You might be seeing a lot of these around Christmas as they are great for keeping small but fragile items safe when they are being delivered to those who will wrap them up and put them under the tree. But their usefulness does not end on December 25th.
You may keep any such boxes you have, but ordering more will be very wise, for this is the kind of thing that may just slip under the radar when it comes to trying to move house without breaking things.
Make Sure You Don’t Forget Small Items
Naturally enough, when the big move comes around your chief aim will be to move large items without them being damaged.
This can include largely robust items like cookers, fridges, washing machines and furniture, but also much more fragile things like computers, televisions, wood furnishings that can be scratched and anything with glass, such as pictures and mirrors. All these will need lots of padding and protection.
Making a packing plan and starting early is the most important thing to do, according to removals website Reallymoving.com. This will help you get more organised and your life will be less disrupted if you do it methodically, starting with the rooms you use least.
Perhaps more pertinently, it advised not to overpack, as this can lead to boxes breaking and items being broken, as well as the risk of injury to those carrying them. Indeed, its guide to packing takes this point further by advising that you stick to using strong boxes. Lots of tape and bubble wrap are also needed.
Be Wary Of Improvisation
The guide also suggests some innovative ideas for packaging to keep items safe. This includes paper and bubble wrap, but it also suggests improvising with clothes, towels and blankets.
However, this won’t apply to everything. Such improvised items may well work for some items, but if you have something that is really precious and delicate like jewellery, or fragile like porcelain items, a small packing box with foam lining will offer a custom-designed means of keeping it safe.
The guide does touch on this when it comes to jewellery, advising that careful wrapping, small boxes and “special packaging materials” may be needed to avoid damage to them.
Foam boxes may indeed be that special material, but at the same time, you will need to consider how to deal with larger fragile objects. The difference is that you might not think about the former as much as the latter.
The Things That Break Most Often In Moves
This is not to say that the fragility of larger items matters. Indeed, removal firms will tell you certain items are, perhaps predictably, far more likely than others to be broken during a move.
The list includes small, fragile items and crockery as well as mid-sized things like musical instruments and larger items such as mirrors, artworks, mirrors and washing machines. Perhaps surprisingly, it can include books too, but these can often be victims of over-packing.
By getting small foam-lined boxes you can ensure that the smallest and most delicate items are given maximum protection and that they are not over-packed. In a way, you can take inspiration from what you may see at Christmas, as items are by nature delivered singly. It may seem tempting to lump things together for convenience, but why take the risk?
It may well be that Christmas will provide you with a lot of leftover packing material you can recycle for your house move. As a company keen on recycling, we shall certainly applaud that and it may indeed be that you can find a lot of useful items that will make your move easier, from sturdy boxes to bubble wrap.
Nonetheless, there will always be some things that need that extra bit of attention to ensure they make it from your old home to the new one safely. That is why it makes sense when planning your move to identify those things that need to be isolated from everything else and packed away safely in their foam boxes, ensuring that they are certain to survive the move.
