Expert European Removals carried out by the UK’s Trusted Professional Removal Service
Proud sponsors of “The Wright Way ” Live radio shows
Fully insured careful removals, part loads and storage to and from Spain, Ireland and France. Relax in the knowledge that your stress free move will happen on time and with full customs management.
Meet our Family team
Coming soon….
Take a tour of the business here
Paul from Indalo transport was a live guest in the studio last Friday, listen to his top tips here below.
Interviews Here
Listen to us on the Radio Here
Avoid these 7 packing mistakes
- The wrong type of box
Did you know there is a right and wrong box that you can use for your removal? No, didn’t think you did. Most
people people go for the cheapest box, which is less money for a reason. It is because it is made of single wall
cardboard, and therefore has no strength. While this might be fine when you want to put your items into a self
store, it is not a good if your removal has to travel halfway across Europe.
Just to give you a heads up, we always stack boxes one on top of the other – up to 6 high – so it is always best to
use boxes made of double wall cardboard, that have enough strength to keep their shape while they are being
moved and stacked. With these proper removal strength boxes, you can be sure that the box itself, and it’s
important contents, will be as good when you receive them in your new house, as when you packed them back in
your old home.
The type of box you’re looking for is triple wall with two layers of corrugations, sandwiched between 3 layers of
straight card. There is a picture of the cardboard below, to help you identify it when you go to buy your boxes,
whether online or at a local removers or self store.
The only cardboard to use for your removal
By the way, if you are buying boxes in Spain, and are anywhere near Mojacar in Almeria, we sell a full range of the
highest quality packaging materials, including triple wall boxes, from our storage facility.
- Seal the bottom of your boxes with lots of tape.
An airtight seal gives the best strength
I’ve seen this many many times, where the box has not been sealed at the bottom sufficiently strongly. In the
worst case, when you lift the box, the bottom of the box opens and the contents drop onto the floor – obviously
not a good result if you have valuables or china inside.
The way to get around this problem to is to completely seal along all of the open edges of the bottom of the box
to make it airtight, putting 2 lines where the 2 leaves join in the middle, and then for good measure put a line of
tape across at right angles as well. - The right way to pack glass and china
It is amazing how many people don’t know how to correctly pack fragile glass and china.
To help you remember, you need to look for and try and work out where the strength is with glasses and plates.
With glasses it is always vertically, the way it sits on a table. So therefore that is the way it should be packed.
Either upside down or right way up doesn’t really matter, however we always pack glasses upside down, so the
second layer of china or glass, in the box, has a firmer base to sit on.
With plates and dishes the most strength is when they sitting on their sides – and not when they’re sitting flat as
they would be on a table – so therefore you should always pack plates upright.
Always remember to use lots of scrunched up wrapping paper to provide a cushion on the bottom of the box, and
also add more between each set of items, and between the sides of the box and the contents. And, of course, use
some to provide a cushion on the top too before you seal the box. No piece of glass or china should ever be
directly touching the cardboard of the box, there should always be some sort of cushion.
While we are talking about packing china and fragile items that might get broken, it’s worth mentioning that if you
do your own packing you’re not insured for the contents of the boxes you pack. Whilst this is probably written in
their terms and conditions, most removal companies don’t tell you this when you ask them for a quote. When you
think about it, only being insured if your boxes are professionally packed is common sense and perfectly
understandable, so use all of these tips to make sure you do things right first time to pack things correctly, and
you shouldn’t have any problems.
- Overloading
Putting too much heavy stuff in a box is an easy thing to do, and when this happens the box can bulge and lose it’s
shape and therefore lose all strength. The way to make sure that this doesn’t happen is to just put heavy things in
the bottom half of the box, and then fill up the top half with lighter items.
A good test is to see if you can lift the box yourself easily – if you can the weight is about right. If you try and lift it
and you can’t even move it off the floor then you might have a little bit of a problem. Whilst your remover will still
collect the box, they may have to use 2 men to lift it, and too many very heavy boxes may lead to an extra charge
for your removal.
Another thing to think about is that if you have lots of heavy boxes stacked up, the bottom one may crumple with
all the weight above it, damaging the contents of the box. - Underfilling
A good example of over filling a box making it bulge and lose shape, and then underfilling the top so it crushes
when anything is put on top
Just like overloading, underfilling a box can be just as bad. This is because a box that is not completely full will
crush when it has other boxes put on top of it. If you don’t have enough things to fill a box up, use a smaller box,
or cut the box down to make it smaller. All boxes should be filled to the very top, so that when you push on the
top on the middle it doesn’t go down too far, and can support a good amount of pressure. The next tip will help
with this as well. - Not sealing the top of the box – make it airtight!
When you finally come to seal your box up, do you just put a single line of tape across the top, to just seal the
two sides where they meet? This is not good enough to provide the best strength to the box.
The best way to seal it is to put a line of tape along every open edge – this will make the box airtight (if you’ve
done the same thing on the bottom, as in 2. above) which increases strength and gives the contents maximum
protection. - Not labelling as you go.
These panels are on all our boxes, to help us make your move easier. Make sure you label it!
The final mistake happens when people are too busy filling boxes, that they forget to mark it once sealed down.
Without labelling each box, you won’t know where that box should go in the new property. This is very simple fix –
just making sure you have a black marker pen and either write what is in the box, or alternatively what room the
box should be put in, on the top.
We recommend writing what room the box belongs in, as this will help your removers make life as easy as they
can for you.
So there you have it, 7 common mistakes you may make when packing for a removal, some probably even
without even realising it. Hope you like the tips and find them useful.
As a bonus, the only other packing advice we can offer is something that is seen all the time and it’s the most
difficult thing for you to fix. I think virtually everyone who moves is guilty of this – it is taking things you’re never
going to use.
As you’re paying good money to get things moved there’s not much point in moving things that will stay in a box
Let us give you a quote here now.
Living and Working In Spain 