Admit it: moving can be such a pain. And if you’re not careful enough to protect your belongings there’s the risk of them not making it to your new home in one piece. If you’re in the middle of buying new furniture for this new home, save yourself the hassle and ship them directly to your new home and not your old home. Here are a few tips for keeping your things safe on your next move:

Get Geared Up

We can guarantee that you’ll need the following items: cardboard boxes, packing tape, moving blankets, bubble wrap, plastic bags, and plastic stretch wrap. If you’re not sure how much you’ll need, consider this: it’ll be better to have a little more gear than you need than not have enough -just make sure that the store you’re buying the gear from has a good return policy for anything left unused. Give all of your furniture and fragile belongings the proper protection they’ll need to reach its destination safely.

Take It Down

Don’t be lazy! You may be tempted to move your furniture straight to the moving truck without taking them apart. That’s a bad idea. Furniture, for the most part, is designed to be stationary so not taking it apart into more mobile pieces will do some damage when they start to jingle inside the moving truck. If time is limited, do the minimum of simply taking them down to subsections as opposed to taking them down completely. If smaller pieces such as nails and knobs had to be taken out, place them all into a small plastic bag, have instructions to yourself on how to put the furniture back together, label, and attach it to the furniture.

Loading Carefully

How you load your belongings into the moving truck matters a lot! The best way to do so is by distributing weight throughout the truck -that way, the truck will have an easier time steering. To protect your more fragile items such as mirrors and picture frames, try squeezing them between mattresses, sofas, or other soft furniture. Lastly, secure them all with straps so that they don’t start moving around.