Another good tip for moving; remove filled drawers with clothing, sheets, or whatever. Load the empty dresser, night stand, etc. on the truck. Replace the drawers and turn the furniture to the inside of the truck, so the drawers will not come open while traveling. Remove the drawers before unloading the furniture and then replace them once the furniture is in the house. This saves a lot of time and the hassle of packing.
Source: I learned this from my parents when I was growing up and we moved.
Most reputable movers won't allow you to keep stuff in cabinets or drawers. We found out the hard way, when the movers came to do an estimate, and informed us that we'd have to pack all that stuff in boxes before the day they'd come to haul our stuff.
The reason for this is, the extra weight of things in drawers or cabinets makes the furniture more vulnerable to being damaged, as it's being loaded and unloaded. So it's wiser just to pack the stuff in boxes, where it belongs. ;-)
This is one I learned from my mom, too. Something I added was to unfold and lay a towel on top of the contents, then tuck the edges of the towel in around the drawer contents. Keeps things from blowing out of the drawers on windy days and your movers don't need to see your "unmentionables" anyway!
Another moving tip is to keep a notebook (I used one left over from other projects) and make notes of what you box up. For example, I had a page for Dining Room, and boxes listed down the side like D1, D2, D3, etc. Next to that I made notes about what was in the box. No need to note every single item since it wasn't for longterm storage.
It was easy to know where things were, too, during that time before the move when you're packing a little every day, boxing up those things you don't consider "essentials" until you need them! The boxes were labeled with that letter and number, in wide marker, on top and 2 sides to make it easy to spot. As my dear, sweet, WONDERFUL relatives were unloading boxes into the new place, it was easy to direct where they went....D6 goes to dining room, K5 into the kitchen, B2 to the bathroom. Then when unpacking, I could look over my list and see what needed unpacked first and know where to look if I needed something not yet unpacked.
One more tip: I found a pharmacy in town that put their cardboard boxes in a separate "cardboard only" dumpster and was able to use all recycled boxes for the move, too. This was handy, too, because they were already broken down and didn't take up so much room until used AND the smaller boxes were easier for my helpers to handle than those huge movers' boxes.
And if you can stand a few more: Use napkins, tea towels, etc, to wrap your dishes whenever possible. Also try to snag bubblewrap and boxes from deliveries where you work. The large styrofoam cases that refrigerated medicines come in are FABULOUS for moving and shipping extremely fragile items....just ask at your doctor's office.
The movers left things in the drawers but we moved from a house that was street level - when we arrived at our destination we found that the homes here have steps. Ours has about fifty to get from the street (moving van) to the front door. If you don't know your destination remove contents
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