Excited to move to your new home? Can’t wait to relocate? Want to learn what new experiences are waiting for you? Sadly, before all that, you need to pack, and part of this is packing, wrapping, and preparing your furniture for storage.
Blankets to sofas, sheets to wooden furniture: Preparing items for storage is a complicated, time-intensive, and exhausting task many people don’t know how to approach. Have you ever wondered how to wrap furniture for storage? This guide has the best tips you need to know!
Tips to Protect Furniture During Storage
#1 Cardboard Boxes and Tape are Affordable and Reliable
Cardboard and tapes are not only widely available and incredibly affordable, but they also provide excellent protection for many types of furniture. In many cases, they’re not entirely sufficient on their own, but for hardy, durable furniture like bed frames and desks, cardboard and tape are largely all you’ll need to prepare them for the storage facility.
#2 Use Bubble Wrap
From electronic appliances to family heirlooms and baubles, bubble wrap is one of the only materials that provides adequate protection to fragile items that can be easily damaged during transportation and storage. Other alternatives like foam and shrink wrap are used to store fragile items too, but they’re generally more expensive, less versatile, and harder to properly use. Certainly, however, if you have incredibly valuable furniture items, foam sheets are also worth considering.
#3 Furniture Bags and Covers Are a Must
Bags or covers are an excellent way to keep most furniture pieces clean, prevent damage and scratches, and impede moisture from spreading. It also helps when you stack and pack furniture items in the storage unit space. Sofas and mattresses come with covers and bags that you can reuse when you prepare for relocation.
#4 Change Your Approach Depending on the Duration of Storage
The protective measures you should take largely depend on how long your furniture will stay in storage. If the furniture is going to be stored for only a few days to a few weeks until you finalise your relocation, making simple preparations is probably enough.
If the storage will last for a few months, however, you need to account for increased moisture, risk of mold growth, dust accumulation, etc. Here, you need to secure your furniture more carefully, use furniture wax, and isolate blankets and fabrics from humidity.
#5 Placement of Furniture and Layout of the Storage Unit
How you place the items in the storage unit matters for protecting furniture pieces, maximising the space available, and accessing items easily and readily. There are some simple principles you can follow when placing the furniture:
- Clearly label items during packing to easily locate them during placement and recovery.
- Heavier and durable items should be stored on the ground with lighter and more fragile items progressively stacked above them.
- There should be some space between the items to allow for ventilation.
#6 Leave It to Professional Movers
As these tips have sadly illustrated, packing furniture is a complicated task: There are tools you require, techniques you need to be familiar with, and many factors you need to consider. All while needing to dedicate a substantial amount of time to the process. Leaving it up to professional movers is something you need to consider. Here at W&W Movers, for example, we have a trained, experienced and professional team tasked with wrapping, handling, and storing the furniture. They go to great lengths to protect your furniture from any damage.
How to Wrap Furniture for Storage FAQ
What Is the Best Way to Wrap Wooden Furniture for Long-term Storage?
Preparing wooden furniture for long-term storage is essentially different from short-term storage. You need to worry about proper ventilating, dust, humidity, moulding, etc. Ideally, you should clean and dismantle the furniture before wrapping it, wax and wrap it carefully, and even consider climate control if the furniture is too valuable.
Is It Okay to Wrap Furniture Pieces in Plastic Wrap for Storage?
Due to not allowing for ventilation, plastic wrap often leads to condensation and moisture, which results in moulding, swelling, and foul smells. It is generally safer to store your furniture wrapped in blankets and soft fabric coverings.
How Do I Protect from Dampness when Storing Furniture?
Protecting from dampness and humidity is crucial during storage. Good ventilation, lack of any items that easily allow water to condense, and climate control are the keys to combating dampness!
What Can I Use to Cover Furniture in a Storage Unit?
When preparing furniture for a storage unit, you have many types of coverings to choose from: Fabrics and blankets, foams and bubble wrappings, and in some cases, even bags and plastic. The type of covering you should choose depends on the type, size, and fragility of the furniture piece.
