Moving Casualties in San Antonio: How to Protect Your Most Difficult-to-Move Items

By Julie DeLong, A-1 Freeman Moving Group 

As a professional moving company in San Antonio, we pack lots of vulnerable items for our clients to ensure they make it to the destination unscathed. Therefore, today, we're here to discuss ways to avoid the most frequent moving casualties when you're packing yourself and approaches to secure your most tough-to-move belongings.

Vulnerable Glassware, Fine China, & Antiques

There exists a valid reason that professional movers have numerous unique packing materials for moving your dishware. Glasses and ceramic dishes are hard enough to move without damaging them, much less fine china along with delicate collectibles. Lots of people notice a minimum of one crack or smashed glass piece in a move with dozens of breakable things in cartons.

You will want to take special care packing, stuffing, separating, and padding your most fragile pieces. 

• Make use of cardboard dishware partitions
• Pack plates upright, this cuts down the possibility of breaking
• Fill each and every hollow place utilizing paper, bubble wrap, or peanuts
• Never allow glass to touch other glass
• Never pack too tightly, or pressure/bumps might cause damaging
• Fill extra room and also the outside of each box with fluffy packing material

Wall mirrors & Pictures

Significant panes of glass are especially challenging to pack given that they have a great potential for becoming damaged or destroyed in the move. This means mirrors and glass-covered pictures need to be packed with special care. What is important is to protect the glass area and minimize the risk of an impact with the glass. 

• Pack picture frames together in a carton utilizing cardboard partitions between
• Fasten a blanket or cloth covering the total layer of the glass
• Utilize a substantial sheet of cardboard over every glass area to decrease impacts
• Stow vertical, like the plates
• Never let packed glass to lay flat

 Wood Furniture

Wood household furniture is a common moving casualty, although not the full furniture item itself. Alternatively, wood tends to endure scrapes, scuffs, and damage to the finish when being disassembled or hauled by way of narrow corners and doorways of the house. It is rather usual for once-pristine wood pieces of furniture to reach the new home requiring refinishing or repairs. Here is how to avoid harm to your home furniture (as well as walls) as you go along: 

• Remove hardware including handles and feet to help make the furniture more rectangle-shaped and even.
• Stow all removed hardware collectively inside a visibly tagged bag or box.
• Small groups of removed hardware may be placed in a drawer of the furniture pieces it came from
• Keep various groups of taken off pieces in the same container for convenient reconstruction
• Tape All drawers and cabinets shut
• Use paper tape or masking tape which doesn't ruin paint, stain, or finish
• Take large furniture apart if you can.
• Wrap each piece on its own and bunch into just one container or bundle.
• Visibly tag everything you take apart, incorporating the place that the pieces should be reconnected later. Colored tape can help.
• Wrap everything in furniture pads or moving blankets to reduce the chance of scuffs
• Ask for assistance or hire professional movers to safely move large or heavy furniture 

Musical Instruments

For those who have any musical instruments, you recognize that a move could mean serious risk for these kinds of carefully tuned and delicate objects. From grand pianos to oboes and all things in between, musical instruments are generally fragile and need to be treated with the utmost concern.

For large musical instruments such as pianos, harps, and acoustic bass, you may need to employ a professional instrument moving team. Speak to your moving company in San Antonio regarding what they are able to undertake or providers they can connect you with who concentrate on moving large instruments correctly spanning short or long distances.

Pertaining to more compact individual instruments, these steps will help you keep your musical equipment protected and in fine shape during the move: 

• Loosen the strings of all stringed instruments including guitars, violins, cellos, and small harps. The humidity and temperature alterations over a move or when in storage might cause strings to snap or sometimes warp the wood of the instrument if the strings are too snug.
• Pack mouthpieces individually and consider carrying your mouthpieces together with you rather than packaging them in a carton.
• Pack musical instruments within their own fashioned in addition to padded cases if possible.
• If realistic, cover instruments in bubble wrap, even inside their cases, to provide added padding and protection.
• If perhaps there isn't a case wrap the instrument in a number of layers of bubble wrap and after that pack in its own carton with nothing else inside.
• Pad the container with newsprint, bubble wrap, or peanuts to prevent moving and bumping.
• Don't put 2 instruments inside the same carton in case they harm one another on the move.
• If perhaps it is a possibility, consider moving instruments within your vehicle instead of within the moving truck. 

Artwork

Whether you have posters, painted canvas, or sculptures, packing art is usually challenging. There's a good possibility your artwork may endure the move not having customized moving services, as long as you pack it the right way and are cautious about exactly where it's placed into the moving truck. For extremely expensive items, speak with your moving company in San Antonio about if you should consider moving them inside your car or shipping with an artwork transport service.

However, if you've simply got a few vulnerable pieces of art to pack and take with you, here's how to keep them from turning into moving casualties:

Canvas & Posters 

• Figure out if it's acceptable to roll up the art and stow in poster tubes. Upright, strong poster tubes are often the most secure strategy to use.
• If storing flat, consider keeping in picture frames that are already packed cautiously to decrease bumps.
• If stowing flat, utilize a thin flat carton near the size of your artwork
• Place the canvas or poster between sheets of cardboard to ensure that they're each flat and secured
• Take into consideration plastic wrap, wax paper or even a rapid spray of paint-sealant for unsealed paintings or perhaps sketches 

Sensitive or Oddly Shaped Statues 

• Like dishes, fill every crevice, cavity, and handle with fluffy packing material
• Similar to musical instruments, place in a cargo box of packaging material and surround with more packaging materials to shield through bumps or compression
• Metal and wood might be located in the same carton
• In general, never pack two glass or breakable statues within the same carton

 Exercise Equipment

Lastly, we arrive at the toughest but maybe most complicated packing job of all: your training gear. Weights, weight benches, stationary bikes, and special workout gear are frequently a tremendous challenge to move. The weighted and structural sections can be very weighty while the gear itself might be intricate and/or cumbersome to move. In fact, substantial work out machines are frequently the reason for moving casualties.

Sporting gear, however, could be very sensitive. Rackets and skis, snowboards in addition to surfboards, and other finely wrought sporting gear might take serious hurt from the wrong kind of jostling over a move. These are generally things you shouldn't quickly throw in a container and set off.

Here's how to move your home gymnasium and sporting equipment properly without any breaks, losses, or too-heavy containers:

Weights 

• Pack 1 or 2 per carton
• Pad tightly and pack into small now-heavy boxes
• Search for or assemble cartons smaller than a book box
• Pack disc weights in workable piles
• Wrap in furniture pads and secure using shrink wrap
• Do not ever load up some weights heavier than you can carry
• Pick up with your legs 

Workout Gear 

• Retain and pack the set up guidelines
• Take down anything you can and pack in bundles of bars and bench sections
• Label every part as well as screw once you take down and stow within tagged bags together with the workout gear pieces
• Snap pictures before you disassemble to help with reassembly 

Sporting Gear (Rackets, Surfboard, etc.) 

• Stow rackets in their cases with an additional layer of cushioning. Don't allow to bend.
• Bubble-wrap skis and boards and then pack into cases or vertical cartons.
• Consider additional cardboard or struts to keep boxes impact-resistant and firm
• A professional mover can provide cartons, if you need them
• Pack categories of gear jointly inside the identical box.

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Moving to a new residence in San Antonio does not have to include the common moving casualties such as household furniture scrapes or cracked plates. Whether you're relocating large everyday things or exclusive delicate belongings, these pointers will help you have a tragedy-free move with every one of your beloved possessions making it safely to your new residence. If you need more smart moving tips from a professional moving company who has seen it all or you're concerned about moving specific things in your house, give us a call today!