How To Quickly Pack Your Living Room For Moving

America’s Top Rated Moving Services has a lot of experience moving household goods, and if you want to pay extra, they will pack everything in your living room for you.

However, most people elect to pack at least part or all of the household themselves, and one of the most common DIY self-packing rooms is the living room.

Before discussing packing the moving the living room in an efficient yet safe manner, we need to talk about the things you will need to do a professional job of packing so that your living room furniture arrives undamaged during the move.

At a minimum, for most things you will need:

• 1. Sturdy boxes in various sizesThese boxes should have flaps allowing them to be completely closed and taped shut.
• 2. Packing Paper
• 3. Paper Pads
• 4. Lots of tissue paper
• 5. Strong Packing tape
• 6. Felt tip markers for marking

In addition, for packing the large things, ie, couches, easy chairs, living room tables, and flat-screen televisions, you will also need:

• 1. Long Cardboard strips about 12 inches high
• 2. A number of moving blankets
• 3. Styrofoam supports for the television
• 4. Specialized boxes for the television as well as any glass mirror items
• 5. Rolls of plastic wrap

Let’s begin with your $2,000 living room sofa that you love to death. But even if it yours cost closer to $400, you never the less want to see that it comes through the move unscathed.

In the first step, before doing anything else, you must determine whether the sofa is leather or not. Leather can sweat in humid conditions, and so you never want to wrap a leather couch or chair with plastic wrap.

Next, before starting the packing of the sofa, put down a thick blanket on your floor (unless your living room is carpeted) and roll the back of your sofa onto the floor so you have easy access to the feet.

Gently remove all the feet from the sofa and immediately place each foot into a plastic bag, and then put them into a small box which we will pack later.

Once the feet and all the hardware are removed, then take one, two, or possibly three stips of wide cardboard and tape them to the front and both sides of the sofa.

These cardboard strips serve like bumpers on a car to protect all three edges from any type of damage, particularly if the front and sides of your couch have wood highlights.

If your couch is not leather, then wrap a protective layer of plastic wrap completely around both the lower and the upper layers of the sofa. This serves as a protective dust cover, and feel free to use plenty of plastic wrap. It’s cheap.

Again, skip the plastic wrap if the couch is leather, but then take up to 5 or 6 moving blankets and cover the entire surface of the couch. Then wrap the tape around all of the blankets to hold everything together.

Before you tape everything together, pack all of the feet and parts into a small box then tape the box neatly around the middle of the couch. There is nothing worse than packing a box of feet parts separately and have them get lost in the move.

Make sure the box is taped around the middle as the moving people will be picking the sofa up on both ends.

Packing electronics before a move can be puzzling at times, so packing televisions is best if you have the original box and styrofoam supports for your TV, but if not, ask your mover for special TV support boxes.

If the television has support feet, remove the feet and put them in the bottom of the box, under some styrofoam. Then use the original, or if you don’t have it make styrofoam supports all around the television.

The best way to do this is to tape a wide area of styrofoam into the box on the bottom and the sides, and then use an “Exacto” knife to slip the television into the slots you’ve created.

Before slipping the TV into the slots, use thin foam wrap or bubble wrap to protect the entire screen and use moving tape on the back of the tv to secure the wrap.

Your flat-screen television should fit snugly into the styrofoam supports, which is again a reason why you should also keep both the styrofoam and the box for electronic products.

Once the television is fit snugly into the box, then add a cover level of styrofoam to the top of the television, and tape the box shut. Your box should be designed to fit your television so there is no wiggle room at the top.

Two important things to keep in mind when you are packing your television.

• 1. Never lay your TV down flat in a box.Flatscreen TVs are designed to carefully distribute the weight of the TV when standing up. If you lay a TV down, you risk cracking the screen.
• 2. Always label your box on all sides with an arrow pointing to the right way to hold the boxMake sure you have bright, bold arrows on both the front and back of the box and sides pointing to the correct way to handle the box. Then add the words, “This side up.”

Perhaps you have multiple lithographs or large blow-up photos of your family framed in glass or have a decorative mirror. America’s Top Rated Moving Services company says that you might want to leave this task to the professionals as they are easily breakable.

However, if you choose to pack them yourself, obtain boxes specially designed for mirrors. Then wrap the mirror carefully in the paper (or bubble wrap or use small moving blankets) then place the mirrored object in a “mirror box”, tape it closed, and then wrap tape on the outside of the box in a variety of directions to keep every item safe.

When packing lamps, always remove the lampshades from the lamp itself. It’s also a good idea to pack any nuts or devices holding the lampshade in place into an envelope and tape it inside of the box.

For the lampshade, you need a sturdy box about two inches wider than the lampshade.
Place the lampshade inside the box, and then fill the sides of the box with crumpled packing paper or bubble wrap to keep the shade from moving in the box.

To prepare the lamp base, carefully wrap it in paper pads, then place it upright in the box, and again, fill the sides with either crumpled packing paper or bubble wrap to make sure it stays in place.

You might also use styrofoam to keep your lamp base from moving around while it sits in the carton.

Packing for a move isn’t all that complicated, but it takes patience and common sense to do it right and get your living room moved safely.