Packing & Moving Household Goods/Introduction

There is a lack of knowledge among laymen today about good techniques for DIY (do it yourself) packing, moving, storing and trucking of household goods. People who plan to move themselves mostly consider this activity to be a simple, no-brainer, muscle-mutt kind of thing. But if they were to observe well trained professional movers efficiently and quickly doing a move or if they were to have a painful injury or a costly damage during their move, they might take a whole different view of the matter.

In order to expedite their move and avoid the grief of personal injuries and / or costly furniture damages, everyone who self-moves would benefit greatly from some solid instruction about how to properly relocate their furniture and other household goods. Knowledge and implementation of good DIY moving methods would definitely help people to save money, which is their main motivation behind their self moving, isn’t it?

When one searches around, there are only 3 or 4 books to be found anywhere on the subject of household goods packing and moving. The problem with each of these books is that they’ve been written by someone who has frequently used professional movers for their relocations. So, not being professional movers, these authors are neither experienced nor qualified to teach DIY moving techniques and they don’t! Their books only inform people about what-to-do when they relocate their homes with a mover. They don’t teach the importance of securely padding and safely lifting and carrying major furniture pieces which is information which is vital during actual DIY moving. When done correctly these techniques make the moving task easier and safer; thus preventing personal injuries and / or costly furniture damages.

Another source for this kind of information could be the big name national moving Van Line companies. They all have internal training texts and videos for their employees which teach them good moving technique. Unfortunately, these companies have no motivation to make their teachings available to the general public because they want to be doing everyone's relocations themselves on a for-hire basis. So, for them to make their intellectual property available for DIY moving would appear to be cutting their own throats (so to speak) in the moving business. However, on the Internet if people search around they will find that many of these professional movers’ websites do give some free moving tips but these all boil down to being merely moving checklists with some packing advice. These moving and packing tips are primarily given to draw people to the mover's website in hopes that they will contact the mover for a quote.

There are also the rental truck company websites that give free moving tips but these too are inadequate because they merely describe what-to-do, such as suggesting that people pad their furniture in order to protect it while its being moved. But they don't show exactly how to properly and snugly do that padding so that the pads wont slip while the movers are struggling to carry that heavy furniture piece up or down stairs.

Consequently, there just doesn’t seem to be any teaching material anywhere that instructs people comprehensively about good professional packing, moving, storing and trucking techniques. And yet there is a huge potential audience all over the world for this information! the American population alone is now reported as being over 300,000,000 people, which compacts down into an audience of about 85 - 90,000,000 total family units (approximately 3.5 people per unit). Its a statistical fact that approximately 20% of this population relocates every year, which equates to 15 - 20,000,000 American family units relocating every year. Beyond this large American audience, there are also many, many millions of mobile family units worldwide that have the same need-to-know about good relocating techniques. Developing countries invariably also bring forth a big middle class that accumulates nice possessions and they too will need to occasionally relocate as time goes on. So overall there is a tremendously vast audience for this kind of instruction.

Many of these mobile people will be doing various forms of self moving, especially if they are in the 18 to 35 year old age group who are not yet affluent enough to afford to hire a professional mover and are still young enough and strong enough to take on this daunting task themselves. These younger people could learn how to do all of their moving the easy way, through finding and utilizing this instruction here but most will probably learn it the hard way by relocating themselves untrained. And unfortunately, some of these untrained people will actually learn how difficult moving can be the extremely hard way by incurring grievous and expensive personal injuries and / or costly damages to their goods and property. These unfortunates wont end up saving any money at all by doing their own moving because of such unexpected extra expenses. Instead they will wish to God that they had just hired professional movers and spared themselves a whole lot of costly, unprofitable bother.

An example

For instance, as has been done below, people will be taught how to tightly and snugly pad an armoire and cardboard its glass (if it has any) in order to protect it during moving.

• 
  Armoire, prior to packing
• 
  Armoire, after packing.

Snugly padding a furniture piece also makes it easier for the movers to grip and handle it while it is being moved than if its left bare. Such padding also holds the drawers in and protects the piece from scrapes, abrasions, rubs and nicks to its finish from bumping into walls and doorways while it is being carried.

Why Wikibooks?

This Wikibook is an attempt to reach this huge global audience with this information by using Wikipedia's worldwide impact.

As an open source Wikibook there is also a hope that other experienced movers and knowledgeable laymen around the world will participate by adding what they know about moving to its content so that people everywhere will become better and better informed about how to safely and efficiently accomplish their household goods moving, packing, storage and trucking.