If you’re moving homes, you probably know what a big task it is to move your belongings from one place to another safely. And packing valuable items can be a major undertaking. The last thing you want is to open up your boxes once you’ve moved and discover that your treasured valuable items have all shattered. Of course, you can always hire movers to help you move your things, but you can’t always trust that they’re going to keep your belongings perfectly safe. So it’s important to take some measures of your own to make sure your breakable and delicate items stay intact during your move.

Before the move
Before you even begin to pack up, let your movers know that you will be packing and moving fragile items. If you don’t have any movers working with you, then preparing your things for transport will be all your responsibility. It’s important to take care when preparing to pack your valuable items. Remove them from their cupboards and wrap each item carefully in padded material to help protect them during the move. Each piece should be cleaned and dusted before they are packed. This way, you don’t have to deal with the hassle of cleaning them after you’ve arrived at your new home. Instead, your valuables will be prepped and ready to be stored away, making the move-in process so much easier.

Packing and sealing the boxes
First, you’ll need to pack your boxes with your valuable items. If you’re packing wine glasses, expensive dishes or other fragile items, you will want to include some kind of separating material so that the valuables aren’t rubbing against each other. A good option is a foam material to pad the items. You can also use Styrofoam chips to fill the space in the box to keep your items safe. Make sure you seal your boxes well so that they don’t open up during transit. After your boxes are securely sealed up, you can now stack them safely. Stacking boxes on top of one another is often the only way to fit them all into the moving truck, especially if you’re working with limited space. Use very durable tape to seal your boxes to make sure they stay shut. You should always pack the heaviest items on the bottom and place lighter items in the top portion of the box.

Mark and label your boxes
It is very important to make sure that you mark the boxes that are fragile, so that they can be clearly distinguished from the ones that aren’t. Especially if you’re hiring movers, you want to make sure that they are aware which boxes to treat with special care. Otherwise, they might just throw the boxes around and break your fragile items. You can also label the boxes with coloured markers to indicate which room they belong in. This will reduce the amount of time that the boxes spend being moved around. If the movers are immediately aware where each box is supposed to go in the new home, they won’t be transporting them all over the place.