Whether you’re moving a few furniture pieces into storage yourself or transporting your entire home to another location via a moving company, you need to be mindful of personal safety during the moving process. After all, the last thing you want is a serious injury that impacts your work schedule and quality of life, simply because you were unaware of the proper moving day safety tips! Protecting muscles, joints, and your general health while moving is just as important as keeping your home and belongings free from damage, so plan your move with our comprehensive safety checklist!
Personal Safety Tips for Moving Day
To ensure your body and physical health are protected during your move, it’s important to follow these personal moving day safety tips!
Moving Day Safety Tips #1 - Proper Warmup & Lifting Techniques
Lugging heavy furniture from your home to another location (probably during the hot summer months) will be an intense workout. And just like any workout, engaging in a short warmup session will help protect your muscles, joints, and ligaments from potential injury. To that end, stretching and engaging in some light cardio (like a 15-20 minute jog) will help prepare your body for the task of lifting heavy boxes, containers, and pieces of furniture. Additionally, you should engage in proper lifting techniques. Always lift heavy objects with your legs and NOT WITH YOUR BACK! Also, avoid twisting motions to prevent serious or chronic injury to your back, neck, hips, ankles, and other joints.
Moving Day Safety Tips #2 - Proper Attire
Wearing the proper attire when moving is essential for personal safety. Avoid wearing excessively baggy shirts and pants, so that you do not snag them on doorknobs, furniture corners, or loose nails and screws. Try to wear shorts or pants with multiple pockets, for tools, keys, and other moving essentials. When it comes to footwear, try to wear construction or steel-toed shoes, to protect your feet from falling furniture or unseen sharp objects protruding from the floor. To protect you from the sun, caps and sunglasses are advisable and can be removed at inopportune times. You should also invest in thick construction gloves, back braces, and moving straps to protect your hands and back.
Moving Day Safety Tips #3 - Stay Hydrated and Rested
Since a majority of moves happen in the summer, it’s extremely important to stay hydrated while you are exerting yourself physically under the blistering sun. Invest in a pack of 12 or 24 water bottles and keep them in your car or moving truck, or make sure you have easy access to a continuous water supply. Failure to do so could result in dehydration and over-exhaustion (i.e. dizziness, headache, vomiting, etc.), and in the worst-case scenario, heat stroke, which will require a hospital stay. It’s also vital to take breaks to rest and relax when needed, to avoid the aforementioned scenarios.
Safety Tips for Your New Home
It is not only your body and physical health that needs protection during a move, it is also your new home or living/storage space. Here are some moving day safety tips for new home, living or storage space:
Moving Day Safety Tips #4 - Prepare Your New Home
Before you or your movers enter your new living or storage space, it is vital to clear and clean the pathways that lead to the areas where your belongings will be going. This means moving things like leftover furniture, tools, dust, and papers from the way, so movers have easy access to rooms and nothing underfoot they can trip on.
If you have pets or young children, it’s advisable to have them watched and sat for at another location while you move. If that is not possible, try securing pets temporarily in a carry case or cage. Young children can be kept in a spare or empty room, under adult supervision.
Moving Day Safety Tips #5 - Protect Your New Home
Before you move, it’s a good rule of thumb to have detailed measurements of your rooms, passageways, and/or storage spaces to see if your furniture, boxes, and belongings will fit in the places you envision them. If not, you may damage your floors, walls, banisters, or railings trying to stuff a couch through a doorway it’s unfortunately too big for.
Even furniture that does fit through doorways and stairwells can potentially scratch or damage floors and walls. To protect against this, it’s advisable to properly pack and cover your furniture (see below). Also, you should invest in furniture wraps, moving straps and carpets, and heavy blankets to protect your floors and walls.
Moving Day Logistics
To ensure a smooth transition of your belongings from one place to another, here are some moving day safety tips for packaging and logistics:
Moving Day Safety Tips #6 - Organization
Using plastic, transparent bins for your belongings during a move is advisable. This way, they are easily stackable and you can see exactly what’s in your bins. If this is not feasible or too expensive, you should use sturdy cardboard boxes of a uniform size (i.e. in small, medium, and/or large sizes). In any event, you should label each box with its contents and color coordinate with Post-its according to the room it is going into (i.e. green = kitchen, blue = master bedroom, etc.). This way, your boxes will find their way to the right room and you’ll be able to find what you are looking for easily.
Moving Day Safety Tips #7 - Invest in Proper Packing Equipment
Transporting heavy or fragile items is always a cause for concern, as nobody wants any of their possessions broken or damaged. To avoid this, it’s wise to invest in proper packaging materials like bubble wrap, wrapping paper, shrink wrap, and heavy-moving blankets and rugs. Also, dollies and hand trucks are essential for moving heavy furniture and appliances like filing cabinets, refrigerators, and cabinets.
When packaging fragile items, it’s advisable to wrap the well and provide cushioning within the box. Furniture and appliances should have their corners wrapped to avoid damage to their surfaces, as well as floors and walls.
Choosing Between Professional Movers and DIY
Although it may be tempting to move your belongings yourself to save a few dollars, it is advisable to leave moving to the professionals. This will keep both you and your belongings safe from potential stress, strain, and damage.
It should be relatively easy to find a reputable moving company in your area. Simply research and access their websites to ascertain what services they provide and read reviews and testimonials to judge their level of quality. (Don’t just rely on their website for reviews; check 3rd party sites like Yelp and Google Reviews as well for objectivity). Of course, word of mouth from trusted sources like friends, relatives, and colleagues is also invaluable.
In case you decide to DIY your move, it’s imperative to follow our advice (presented as a checklist below). In case you need more moving day safety tips or would like information on our services, contact Mini-Entrepôts Sauvegarde today!
Moving Day Safety Tips Checklist
#1 – Proper Warmup & Lifting Techniques
#2 – Proper Attire
#3 – Stay Hydrated & Rested
#4 – Prepare Your New Home
#5 – Protect Your New Home
#6 – Organization
#7 – Invest in Proper Packaging Equipment
#8 – Hire Professional Movers (if possible)