How to Pack Dishes for Your Move
Getting ready for a move? Whether you’re simply moving into another apartment within a single building or crossing state lines in a rental truck, packing properly will save you time, money, and plenty of headaches on moving day.
Your kitchenware — dishes, bowls, glasses, and other items — are some of the most fragile items you’ll be transporting. So it’s import to pack them safely to prevent damage or the need for replacement. Here is the best way to protect your dishes when preparing for your move:
Get Your Supplies
You’ll need boxes, tape, markers, and packing paper. We’ve written before about the best places to pick up moving supplies, but a simple google search will generally yield useful results as well.
Tape, Don’t Fold Your Boxes
If you don’t take any other lesson on how to pack dishes from this article, take this one. Seriously, this is probably the single most important thing to remember when packing boxes of any kind.
It’s tempting to fold box flaps into one another, but we strongly recommend against doing so. Any kind of weight will push through the box flaps as soon as someone lifts the box off the ground. If that weight is made up of dishes, that’s a going to be a big problem. Securely taping your boxes on the bottom is the best way to avoid this.
Wrapping your dishes in paper before putting them in a box is a great way to protect them. Photo via Safe Responsible Movers
Wrap Dishes in Paper or Cloth
Packing paper is generally the best for this, but you can use newspaper or clothing with thin fabric (like tee-shirts, pillowcases, or pajama pants) if you like. But be sure not to simply put in a stack of bowls or plates into a box without any kind of protection. You generally want to wrap every other item in the stack. For example, wrap the first bowl you put in the box so that it’s completely covered in paper. Then you can put the next bowl, uncovered, inside of the first one. Then cover the third and keep alternating the protection that way until your box is a little more than half-full. Once you’ve reached that point, use more paper or protective material to fill the rest of the empty space in the box. This will prevent your glass items from moving around and potentially breaking within the box.
Protect Sharp Edges!
This is extremely important. When packing knives or chess graters or anything else with a sharp edge or blade, be sure to wrap the dangerous part thoroughly, and place within the box so that it can’t move around enough to cut through the box. If you have a bad experience with your movers, you may not want to tip them. But that’s no reason to accidentally stab anyone.
Got some items with sharp edges? Be sure to protect them within the box! Photo via Felice Beato [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Tape, Don’t Fold the Top!
Again, do not fold the top of the box when you’ve filled it up. Tape the box shut. A taped box is a box you can stack on. A folded box cannot hold the weight of other boxes so well. So for the sake of your belongings, use tape.
Label Your Boxes
For a small apartment, just writing, “kitchen,” on your boxes will probably suffice. After all, how many different places could the contents of those boxes possible go? For a larger place like a single family home, it may be better to label the boxes with both the room and the contents. For example, if your everyday kitchenware is going in your kitchen cupboard, write, “Kitchen – Plates,” on the appropriate box. And then, for fine china that you plan on keeping in the dining room or beer glasses for the bar in your finished basement, you could write something like, “Dining Room – Wine Glasses.”
Properly labeling your boxes when packing can save you lots of headaches and confusion when you’re unpacking and trying to settle into your new home.
Also — be sure to label any boxes with sharp objects clearly so that you or your movers know to be extra careful when unpacking.
Stacking Properly
If you’ve hired the best movers in Massachusetts, don’t worry about this detail. However, if you’ve rented your own truck and are packing it on your own, remember to stack your boxes properly. The biggest, heaviest, sturdiest boxes should go at the bottom of the stack, whether you’re placing them directly onto the floor of your truck, or on top of a heavier item like a dresser. Either way, fragile items like dished should always go as close as possible to the top.
Now that you know exactly how to pack dishes, it’s time to book your movers! Fill out our request form and get a quote today!
Safe Responsible Movers – Boston Moving Company – How to Pack Dishes
