Packing Services
West Valley City

If you learn to pack one room well, make it this one. A kitchen is the densest, heaviest and most fragile room in a house, and it accounts for a large majority of everything broken in a move.

Just-In-Time Moving packs homes across West Valley City and Salt Lake County, and this is what we do in a kitchen.

Plates: on edge, always

The single most useful packing fact most people have never been told. Plates go into a box standing on their edges, like records in a crate, not stacked flat.

A stack of plates has almost no strength against a load pressing down on it, and the plate at the bottom takes everything. On edge, each plate is supported along its strongest axis and the stack braces itself.

Wrap each one, stand them in a row, and fill the gaps at each end so nothing can lean.

Glasses: individually, upright

Wrap each glass separately, then stand them upright rather than laying them down. Stemware in the divided sections of a wine box if you have one.

Fill the space above them so nothing can be stacked directly onto the rims, and mark the box so nothing is.

Weight: small boxes only

Kitchens produce the heaviest boxes in a house. Pans, tinned food, appliances and crockery all go into small boxes, without exception. If a finished box needs two people, it is the wrong box and it will be handled worse for it.

The awkward items

Knives wrapped individually with the blade covered, taped, and marked. Somebody is going to open that box.

Small appliances in their original boxes if you kept them; otherwise wrapped with the cords secured to the item.

Open food should not travel. Sealed pantry items can, in small boxes, and are worth reviewing rather than moving wholesale.

Oils and anything liquid bagged separately, because a leak in a box of linen is a considerably worse outcome than the loss of the oil.

The last things

Pack the kitchen last, the day before, and keep out the kettle, a few mugs, a pan and cutlery. Put those in a clearly marked box that travels with you rather than on the truck.

Fill every box to the top so nothing crushes, label on the side by destination room, and tape the bottom properly before you begin filling it.

If you hand over one room, make it this one. The estimate is free and in writing.

Call (435) 862-3080 or email office@movingjustintime.com.