When moving, the first thing you usually think about is how strenuous the process will be. Lifting heavy furniture, carrying it through tight doorways, and being exhausted at the end of a long day all plague your mind. It’s a draining task, for sure. But what a lot of people fail to keep in mind is having the appropriate gear for moving. Do you have a trailer for all of your furniture, appliances, and items? Just a truck bed? What about dollies?
These things are likely the first things after cheap moving boxes that you’ll think of when it comes to planning a move. What may slip your mind, however, are items that can help secure and protect your belongings. Those things are ratchet straps and furniture blankets.
Boxes and furniture shift during a move. It’s the nature of driving your things to a new location. And you can’t really control their shifting unless you have straps.
Why straps are a must.
Straps, or cargo straps, only have a list of pros when it comes to why you should use them. Because they’re available in a range of weight capacities, come with different kinds of hooks, are lighter than chain, and won’t scratch finished items (like all of your wood furniture) the way chain can, they’re versatile, extremely useful, and essential to your move.
Cargo straps most often come with some sort of ratchet that enables you to easily secure your furniture tightly. Additionally, they always have hooks (that come in a wide variety) that latch onto an anchor point in your vehicle, trailer, or whatever else you’re attaching it to.
To emphasize how useful these things are, note that they can also secure heavier equipment like motorcycles, boats, ATVs, and large equipment to trailers. They’ll also strap down snowblowers, lawn mowers, and even lumber in pickup trucks. Pretty versatile outside of just moving furniture, huh?
Furniture blankets (the Swiss Army knife of moving furniture).
I never really knew the importance of furniture blankets until moving into my first apartment outside of college. That’s when I started getting actually nice furniture. And that’s when I was introduced to furniture blankets. (Let it be noted that they’re usually heavy duty like quilts, so even old, think blankets or quilts would work in place of blankets designed specifically for furniture.)
This type of blanket’s primary purpose is to save your furniture from rubbing up against other pieces of furniture. This protects your items from rips, tears, scratches, and other marks you wouldn’t want. Typically, you would want to place the blankets between each piece of furniture in your trailer. That’s a lot of blankets, however, so some pieces of furniture need it less than others (i.e., your less expensive pieces or those less prone to damage).
The secret benefit of furniture blankets, though, is dragging heavy furniture over door thresholds and along floors. Washers, dryers, and fridges can be especially tough to move in and out of houses without scratching hardwood flooring, yet they’re usually too heavy to pick up and move inside tight spaces (without the use of a dolly). Furniture blankets double as moving equipment in that you can drag things along floors!
The next time you plan to move or help move someone in, invest in a few furniture blankets and cargo straps. They make all the difference in securing down items, whether they’re loose or in cheap moving boxes.
