Packing up your basement

When packing up your home, along with your garage, your basement can be one of the toughest places to pack. You may look and ask how come? Well chances are, if you have lived in your home for a little while, a good portion of your things have found their way to your basement. Typically, your basement is where everything is stored when you don’t need it. When packing up your home, your basement can certainly be an intimidating room to pack. Here are some tips on the best way to go about packing up your basement.

When packing up your home, and targeting your basement, use these tips to help you pack better, and more effectively.

Start with the basement

It can be one of the largest and most time-consuming areas to pack. While it is up to you, try not to leave it until the end, because it can certainly take a lot of time! When packing up your home, try to start in the basement, so that when you’re done, you can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sort through things

As mentioned earlier, if you have lived somewhere for a while, chances are your basement has become quite full. You may have things that you didn’t even know you had. Take some time to sort through everything. If you have things that you want to sell, Kijiji can be a great place to get rid of things, and make some money while doing it. If you are wanting to donate things, check out thrift stores. For a list of the best thrift stores, click here.

Don’t re-pack everything

If you have a lot of stuff, you may have taken some time earlier to box things up, or put things in plastic totes. Take a few minutes to go through the boxes to make sure things are packed properly, and to see if you even want to ship the things that are still boxed up. If you do, throw some tape on the box, and it’s done. Yes, it’s that simple!

50 lb limit

You may notice that there are boxes that can hold a lot of stuff. That may look like a great idea until you try and move the box. Do your best to limit your boxes to 50 lbs. We aren’t expecting you to weigh boxes, but try to think ahead of the weight of the box, rather than what can fit inside.

Keep things together

Given the wide variety of things that have made their way down to the basement, try to keep like items together. When your packing up your home, try and keep your tools together, and stereo equipment together etc. It is important for two reasons. Things can shift in cartons when they are transported to the destination side. The last thing you want, is to have a screw driver make a nice scratch, or puncture hole in your figurines or Christmas decorations. The second reason is that it will make your unpacking easier, because you will know where things are. For more unpacking tips, click here.

Prepare your weight equipment

If you are one of those people with a treadmill downstairs or with weights, take time to prepare your equipment for moving. Not every treadmill goes up the stairs in one piece. Make sure to take time to take any gym equipment apart to make it easier on move day. Grab a plastic bag for all the hardware, and make sure that it makes it into the setup carton! Also, make sure that you adhere with the 50 lbs rule. Various sized free weights can be packed, but make sure that you don’t put too many 5-10 lbs plates into a carton. It gets heavy fast!

Pack up your small things properly

A basement is often a great location for a workshop. It’s warm, so you can work year-round. If this is the case, it means that you have a lot of hardware and screws. Make sure that you secure your hardware by wrapping it up in paper and then tapping it up. The last thing you want at your destination side is to open up a box full of screws just rolling around. That will take forever to sort! When packing up your home, take some extra time to pack up your little things to make sure your destination goes easier.

As has been mentioned numerous times throughout the blogs, make sure that you leave yourself enough time to pack. The last thing that you want to do, is wait until two weeks before your move to start going through things. When packing up your home, your basement is one of the toughest rooms to tackle, because it has such a wide variety of stuff.

If this seems overwhelming, and you’re looking to have someone pack things up for you, look no further than Quick Transfer. We are Manitoba’s largest owned and operated moving company, and have the ability to service moves locally, nationally, and globally. We are a proud partner of United Van Lines which extends our reach right across the world. Give us a call, for any of your moving needs.