Short of selling or donating all your possessions before moving, there is no way around packing. However, by adopting these life hacks recommended by professional movers in Wichita, you can make the process go much quicker.
How To Pack Your Kitchen For Moving
The kitchen contains more items — from dishes and silverware to cooking utensils and of course foodstuffs — than just about any room in a house or apartment, and thus it poses the biggest packing challenge. But you can save time and prevent food-related messes while packing the kitchen by using these clever tricks.
Capture The Toaster Crumbs
Wichita (and Kansas, generally) is known for its barbecue foods, but it’s the crumbs, left behind in toasters from the slices of toast that people eat with their barbecue, that create potential packing disasters. The trouble with packing a toaster is the openings at the top make it possible for the remaining crumbs at the bottom to fall out when the toaster is turned sideways in the moving box. Cleaning the toaster beforehand minimizes the risks of a mess, but it’s difficult to eliminate all the crumbs. But there is a simple solution: place your toaster in a plastic grocery bag and tie the ends before packing; the bag will capture any loose crumbs and prevent a mess.
Prevent Liquids From Spilling
From dishwashing soap to cooking oil, all kinds of liquids can be found in kitchens. Moving experts suggest the best way to prevent these liquids from spilling during transport is by taking precautions when packing. For example, bottle caps sometimes loosen or pop open inside moving boxes. To create an airtight seal on a bottle of liquid, remove the cap, place a piece of plastic wrap over the entire opening, and then tightly screw on the lid over the plastic. You can keep kitchen liquids organized and prevent them from spilling onto dry goods by packing all the liquids together in a plastic bin.
Defrost The Fridge Before Loading It
Kitchen appliances usually stay behind in the house or apartment. But the one appliance that Wichita moving companies most commonly transport for homeowners is the fridge. If you’re planning to bring your fridge to a new home, first make sure to run the defrost cycle. Defrosting a fridge by letting the freezer ice melt away prevents residual moisture from leaking out and ruining the appliance’s electrical components or causing water-damage to your other belongings.
Packing Tricks For The Bedroom
Some peoples’ bedrooms double as storage lockers. From old clothes and boxes of assorted items packed away in closets to miscellaneous decorations and knick-knacks strewn atop dressers and nightstands, a bedroom can be filled to the brim with all sorts of things. The following tips can help you cut through the mess and cut down on packing time.
Rightsize Before Packing
Confronted with a bedroom that is overflowing with stuff, you might feel a temptation to just pack all the items as you find them, rather than first sorting through everything. However, by taking a half-hour to rightsize the bedroom by categorizing items into “keep,” “sell,” and “donate” piles, you make the move go faster in the long run by decreasing the total volume of things you have to pack.
Don’t Fold Your Wardrobe, Bag It
Moving isn’t like a vacation or a business trip, where you have to fold your clothes and carry them in a suitcase. Instead, the simple and effective way to pack up a closet is to leave the clothes hanging, slide the hangers together, and then pull a large plastic bag over the clothes. Next, tie the bottom of the bag to secure the contents, and don’t forget to tear a hole in the top to expose the curved sections of the hangers so you can hang everything later. Then, when you arrive at the new house, you can just hang the hangers in the closet and remove the bag to reveal your organized wardrobe.
Pack Dresser Drawers With Their Contents
Movers sometimes disassemble large furniture to lighten the load, including by removing dresser drawers and separately loading them. Copying this tactic is a smart time-saving idea, but if you’re tempted first to empty out the drawers, don’t. Instead, keep the contents in place, grab some plastic wrap from the kitchen, and wrap the plastic around the drawers to seal up the open ends, effectively turning the drawers into storage containers. And to protect the drawers during transport, stack them with towels in between each one.
Rightsize Moving Solutions handles all manner of residential, corporate, and senior moves in the greater Wichita, KS, area. If you need assistance packing or would like our team to handle the moving job from start-to-finish, please contact us!