Moving house can be a stressful time, especially if you’re working or have family to look after. When moving house, try not to leave everything until the last minute, particularly when it comes to packing your belongings.
When packing, there’s a few things you need to consider; what items need to be packed carefully and what items you won’t need or won’t fit in your new property. Unless you’re travelling light, it’s unlikely that you need to unpack all of the boxes on your first day in your new home. For this reason, it’s worth planning what you may need quick and easy access to.
L & J Home Ltd are here to help make your house move as stress free as possible so here are our top tips!
Before you pack
We recommend you plan before you start packing. Are you going to start at the top of your house and work your way down? If you have a loft, garage or shed it’s a good idea to go through everything and ask yourself if you need everything you have, if not, you can make up a charity box.
Select your packing materials, think about what items you need to protect and how many boxes you may need.
Packing Hacks
Labelling
Try to pack one room at a time and label them as you go, make sure to add fragile labels or write on them so the removers can be extra careful. Also it helps to let them know which boxes are extra heavy so they can ensure they are secured in the safest way possible in the removal van.
Essentials
Make sure you put the items you’ll want access to straight away in a box clearly marked or in a clear box . Such as your toiletries, phone chargers, kettle and toaster.
Important Items
Place all of your important items together and keep them in a safe place. This may include your birth/marriage certificates, passports, high value jewelry etc. We often recommend that you carry these yourselves for peace of mind.
Heavy Items
It may seem obvious but try to pack books and heavy items in smaller boxes so the boxes aren’t too heavy, especially if you’re using cardboard boxes. Try to label these boxes as heavy and avoid putting delicate items in with them.
Packing Cables
Collect your toilet/kitchen rolls! These can come in very handy when wrapping your cables and you can easily write on them to identify what cable belongs to each electronic device and you can recycle them after.
Toiletries and Makeup
Seal or cover any openings of your toiletries with clingfilm and then pop the lids back on. This can help limit any leakages.
Clothes and other material items
We recommend that clothing on hangers are conseteenered into boxes for ease, this makes sure you don’t have to take them off the hangers, fold and hang them again. To protect your carpets or rugs, you can roll them up and secure with tape or rope from the underside.
Artwork, Mirrors and TV’s
Wrap them in paper or bubble wrap and place them in their original boxes or any secure boxes
Glassware
Use packing paper or newspaper to protect them. Try to wrap them individually.
Pots, Pans and Plates
Use packing paper or newspaper. Try not to stack them directly on top of each other, try to fill the pans with your herb or spice pots to save space. Also, when packing plates, try to stack them upright like vinyls, placing them on top of each other as this can place pressure on the bottom plate and can cause breakages.
Fridge/Freezers
Give yourself plenty of time to defrost and drain after emptying, a few hours would usually suffice.
Gas Ovens
You’ll need to contact a Gas Safe registered gas engineer to disconnect your oven. It’s best to have this organised for before the removal takes place.
Washing Machines
Unplumbing machine machines isn’t as difficult as you might think. Here are some of our tips on how to transport your washing machine.
Furniture
If you’re dismantling your furniture such as beds or wardrobes, try to label the parts, put all the screws, nuts and bolts in a little bag and tape them together. We also recommend that you use bubblewrap to cover the legs of your chairs.
Computers
The most important part - create a backup of the data! After this, turn off and unplug the devices, labelling as you go so you know which cable goes where.
Odd shaped Items
You’ll often find that you have an ‘odd’ shaped item that you’re unsure how to protect. You can simply make a custom sized cardboard box by cutting one to the size you need and shaping it around the item once it’s protected with bubble wrap/blankets.
Just remember….
When packing, we recommend that you use three layers of tape on the bottom of the boxes for extra security and use lots of labels, this will help you settle in nice and quickly at your new home.