If you’re moving home then you will probably find that you have an awful lot of things to box and pack. This can be a fairly daunting task so the temptation is to rush the process and box your items half heartedly. However the problem here is that if you do so then you’ll arrive all he pieces of what you packed, but not necessarily assembled in quite the way you remembered. Taking a little extra care in packing your things then can mean that you get to enjoy them all in your new home and save you a lot of money and heart break. So how do you go about boxing up your possessions? There are some simple tips that can help. First of all make sure that you have lots of boxes. The more you have the less you’ll have to cram into each one and that will mean that your items won’t be so cramped and so will be less likely to get broken (and putting too many things in single boxes will also make them heavy and cumbersome). Most supermarkets will happily part with their cardboard boxes if you wait until the end of the day and ask politely. Drive around a few and get as many as you can. Now obviously it’s important to designate set boxes for different kinds of items. Don’t for example put all of your heavy books in with your delicate china or the china will get broken. It’s not even a good idea if you put the china on top of the books, as if the box falls over the books will still provide a threat to the china. Now books, CDs, DVDs etc can all be placed in as they are. Don’t worry too much about the order but try to pack these in tightly but distributing the weight evenly. Ornaments, crockery, toys and other such items are more difficult. The best thing to do here is to get lots of newspaper. Now pad the inside of each box with newspaper (don’t flatten the paper) and surround each individual item with newspaper and pack them so that they look like balls of fairly solid paper. This way you will protect the small details and extremities on the items from damage or from being broken off. Be sure to write ‘breakable’ on all such boxes to remind you and others to handle these boxes with care (you should also write ‘heavy’ on the other boxes). Finally if you can somehow compact the items themselves then do this too. For example if you have a child who likes Transformers then ensure they’ll al in their vehicle modes first to reduce the number of arms there are to break off. With ornaments this might mean taking things apart to recombine later. Remember too that you can save space by storing things inside one another – for example putting DVDs inside cabinets or large ornamental boxes. Now when you stack your items, just make sure that your heavy boxes go on the bottom and your light ones go on top. At the same time ensure that they’re all well supported and won’t fall over in transit.
These tips were written by author who is a realty broker in Etobicoke. See Real estate Markham listings on the site. e.