You can use plastic wrap to protect your furniture before moving. To wrap your furniture for moving, you need to assemble packing supplies, prepare your furniture for wrapping, disassemble your furniture, the actual wrapping, and placement of the wrapped furniture.
Whether you decide to use professional movers for the job or you want to do it yourself, ensure that you handle your furniture with care before moving it out. You wouldn’t want your weighty and expensive furniture to get damaged in the moving truck along the way.
If you don’t take adequate preventive measures, your furniture can dramatically arrive at the new home. By that, I mean there can be gouges on the furniture, the upholstery might get torn, and if your furniture has glass, it can break.
Knowing how to give your furniture extra protection during moving is part of your moving checklist. That’s the purpose of this guide. To educate you on the steps to properly pack and protect your furniture before moving. It will also discuss how to make your furniture easier to move.
Step 1: Assemble Your Moving Supplies
The following items are handy for packing:
- Plastic wrap/stretch wrap
- Bubble wrap
- Newspaper
- Marking Pens and Scissors
- Cardboard boxes
- Covers for the sofa and mattress
- Plastic sealable bags
Contrary to popular opinion on moving furniture, you will need more than packing tape, cardboard boxes, and moving blankets to pack and protect your stuff. Of course, these items will do the job, but if you want to give your furniture extra protection and enable a smooth transition to your new home, invest in more items. One can easily purchase the above-mentioned additional items at any hardware store nearby.
Step 2: Preparing Your Furniture for Packing
Before you pack your furniture, ensure that you carry out thorough cleaning on your furniture. Dust and clean it entirely because debris and dust can leave scratches on wooden furniture and on other hard surfaces when moving. Another benefit of the cleaning exercise carried out on your furniture is that you won’t carry dirt and debris to your new home along with the furniture.
Also, remove casters, pulls, and knobs from your furniture. This should take a short time. Finally, remove the drawers from the desks or dressers. Use them to pack some items so that you will have additional space for storage while making the heavy items lighter for easier moving.
Step 3: Disassemble Your Furniture Before You Move Them to the Truck
If you can, completely disassemble your furniture before moving. Take out the legs from your tables and even the couches. Disassemble your bed frames. Take out cushions. Doing this makes the moving process more accessible and the large items smaller in size. It also becomes easier for you or the movers to carry. This way, you can avoid damages that can be caused by contact with door frames or walls. While disassembling, note the following tips:
Refer to the furniture manual if there is one. This will help you in the dismantling process.
Use plastic bags to secure and hold the screws and other items for each piece of furniture. Also, secure the items by using packing tape to seal the bag so that these items won’t be lost.
When moving furniture with multiple pieces, make use of masking tape and a marker to identify where each piece is. This helps a lot in keeping your furniture secure.
Be careful with the drill when you want to dismantle and reassemble your furniture to avoid stripping the screws. Use a lower torque configuration and the accurate size of the drill bit to do the job.
Do this step the day before the moving day to save time.
These are very important tips for your furniture when moving.
Step 4: The Wrapping Process Itself
Bubble wraps and plastic wraps are the best things for packing if you want to protect your furniture. For a delicate piece of furniture, opt for a bubble wrap to cover it. Plastic wrap is best used for upholstered furniture. Moving blankets or packing blankets can also do the job for the furniture you want to move. For extra security, use crumpled cardboard pieces in between your furniture.
The extra security provided ensures your furniture is not damaged during the move in the truck. In place of the bubble wrap, you can use the shrink wrap as it is durable and hard to tear.
Bubble wrap is also suitable for securing mirrors, glass tabletops and smaller household items. This video will show you, how to properly pack with bubble wrap:
Tape a big X on these breakable items so that the glass pieces won’t shatter if it breaks. Completely wrap the mirror or glass, especially their corners. Round up this step to protect this breakable stuff by putting corrugated cardboard sheets between your glass tabletop and mirror. Once done, you can then move them to the truck.
Step 5: Design a Placement Plan Before You Move
Before you start placing your furniture in the vehicle, we recommend you have a plan for their placement before you move them. Professional movers are very familiar with this. They know how to place your furniture to further protect them. In essence, placement is just as important as packing.
Note the tips below:
- Create a wall using boxes in a straight line at the end of the truck. They should be of the same size, sealed, and the packing on them should be tight so that they don’t slip when the move begins. Also, ensure that the heaviest boxes (not containing delicate items) should be placed here. This will give the makeshift wall stability.
- Move furniture such as your dressers directly against the wall you have created to provide support. Use packing blankets or cardboard between them.
- The next thing should be mattresses. Put a blanket on the floor of the vehicle to protect your mattress from dirt during the move. That’s if you didn’t wrap your mattress.
- Use an extra layer of packing blankets on upholstered furniture for extra security.
- When the move to the new house has been completed, ensure you unload your stuff carefully. The direction to each room should be clear to the movers. The quicker these items are carried and put down, the lesser the likelihood of them getting damaged.
