Packing Tips Video: Fragile and Bulky Items
April Milner from Wheaton | Bekins and Matt Paxton from Legacy List with Matt Paxton are teaming up to bring you the best practices for packing.
MATT: Paintings, mirrors, and artwork. What do we do with this?
APRIL: The first thing I would like to say is if it’s a painting of high value, or an oil painting, you always want to have that created by a third party company.
MATT: Okay, so we’ll call a specialist that does creating.
APRIL: Call a specialist, absolutely.
MATT: What if a mover says, don’t worry about it, we’ll just throw it in the box?
APRIL: I would probably get a different mover.
MATT: Okay, good to know.
Packing a Painting
MATT: All right, this is just a regular glass piece of artwork. It’s a poster, but we love it. How are we gonna pack it?
APRIL: So, whenever you have an item like this that’s a little bit too big to safely pack into a box, what we’re gonna use is what’s called a mirror carton. The nice thing about mirror cartons is that they come into pieces.
MATT: Okay, so this is two pieces?
APRIL: So we’ve got two pieces that are already built here. You can see they fit inside of each other and we put some padding in the bottom because just like our other boxes we always want to have a padded bottom. We are going to make sure that we are protecting this. Now obviously the paper is not gonna be big enough, okay, but that’s okay. We’re going to do what we can with some paper here.
MATT: And we’re gonna hit a couple pieces of paper across all of it. Okay.
APRIL: Couple pieces of paper. Because again, you can never use too much paper.
MATT: So this is like when you’re wrapping a gift and you’ve cut off too short of paper, you have to turn it sideways to cover it.
APRIL: That’s correct.
MATT: Okay, I love it.
APRIL: So once you have the edges protected, because that’s what we’re going for here, we wanna protect the frame.
MATT: So we’re not worried about the frame, the glass, we’re just worried about the frame.
APRIL: We’re not worried about the glass right now, and I’ll show you why in a minute. We’re going to slide this in to my padded carton that I’ve made, and this is where I’m going to take some extra paper to protect that glass. Okay, and again, I’m going to crumple it up a little bit, give it nice protection. Because if you keep it flat on it, it’s not going to protect it because it’s not cushiony. You have to make it cushiony.
MATT: So the air is your friend here. You’re really using as much space as you can with the curled up paper to protect the painting.
APRIL: Correct. And then these boxes fit inside of each other.
MATT: So that folds up to the actual size of the frame.
APRIL: That’s correct.
MATT: Okay.
APRIL: So this is the whole size of the frame. Okay. And again, we’re just gonna shove a little bit of extra paper on the top to make sure we have all the sides protected. We don’t want any air in there. Okay, nice and protected.
MATT: So that painting is pretty nice and snug in there with all that extra padding that you have on it.
APRIL: Correct, but you’ll see it’s too tall for the boxes. So we’re gonna make two more pieces.
MATT: Alright, show me how we do that. Fold.
APRIL: Fold on the edges. And just fold it in on the perforations. Gonna hit it with some tape.
MATT: give you some tape. Maybe you have like eight to ten pieces of tape ready for you.
APRIL: For a mirror carton that does help. And again this can be a mirror, this can be artwork, it can be anything big and flat. You can pack a smaller flat screen television in these boxes as well. You know if you have a 30-inch television you could pack that in here as well.
MATT: Alright let’s move this back up here so I can actually properly tape it.
APRIL: Okay, so we have our mirror box. Again, we just wanna tape it so it’s nice and solid. And you can even feel, there is no cushion in it. I mean, there is no air in there.
MATT: There’s no air in there. Okay.
Packing A Trophy
MATT: All right, so a lot of our clients have like artwork or big statues or even big trophies. This family obviously very proud. This is the winner of the D-Flight. So not the ABC, but the D-Flight. So I think this is a joke. It’s the best of the worst golfers. You obviously want to protect that. How would you pack that? Because I am super worried about this.
APRIL: Absolutely, so this guy right here because of this. Kind of do a little field test on it to be honest with you because if it comes out like sometimes they’re removable we can take it out and we’ll wrap it separate and then wrap it in with this okay this one does not come out so what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna create an extra base for that. All right, so the first thing I’m gonna do here is we’re gonna start by protecting this very important club that’s sticking out. Give it some extra padding. It doesn’t have to be super tight because we don’t want it to break, but what we wanna do is create a nice base for it. Then, similar to a wine glass, I’m gonna go ahead and wrap this. What we’re trying to do is get — so it’s a little bit more even and it’s not just a little tiny piece sticking out. That’s right.
MATT: You’re just adding that second layer on the, or you’re adding that first layer as the base layer and then you’re gonna wrap the whole thing.
APRIL: That’s correct. So then as we wrap it, we’re gonna kinda do a feel test on this guy, right? Gonna kinda see, does that feel sturdy enough? I don’t think it does because of that piece sticking out. So I’m gonna give it a little extra cushion by rolling it like that, and then give a nice final wrap. Like this so that you can’t even tell where that golf club was.
MATT: So you’ve got so much paper around that, that it really feels like a block now.
APRIL: Exactly.
MATT: And does that store laying down or up top?
APRIL: Honestly, I would probably store it laying down with a lot of cushion around it.
MATT: So maybe another layer on top of that.
APRIL: But I would put it in a smaller medium carton. So that there’s not a lot else going on with it.
MATT: So people have two emotions when they’re packing. They’re very sentimental, it’s a really important item and they don’t want it to break. But then their cheapness really takes over. And they’re like, I’m not going to waste another cent on this paper. Please, let your sentimental overtake your cheapness. Put as much paper as you can in that. Because if it breaks because you saved 10 cents worth of paper, I don’t think you’re going to be happy.
APRIL: Absolutely!
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