Tips for moving heavy furniture items safely and efficiently
The easiest, safest, and most reliable way to move your furniture is simply to leave it in the hands of people with years of experience and expertise. When you need the services of a professional removal expert in Perth, Adlam Transport is just the team you need to get the job done at a fair price, safely, and with the minimum of fuss.
However, it may be that you are confident you can muster plenty of helping hands and are strong enough to handle the job yourself. If so, we have put together a few tips for moving heavy furniture items safely and efficiently to make life a little easier and hopefully prevent damage to items and personal injury.
Tips for moving heavy furniture
The task of just rearranging heavy furniture can be much harder than most people imagine if not done carefully with forethought and planning. Objects like wooden beds and sofas, old-fashioned wardrobes, and chests of drawers are all significantly heavier than you might imagine. Have you ever tried to push a traditional piano even a short distance? If not, take it from us, they are almost unbelievably heavy. Here are some simple, effective techniques you can use to ease the task somewhat and protect yourself and your precious belongings. As you will soon discover, most tips apply before you even begin moving things:
Plan where everything will land
You don’t want to arrive with something heavy in your hands and have to decide where it’s going to live. Plan in advance and draw simple diagrams so any helpers can see the plan if you will be moving things in a staggered way. Tape them to the wall somewhere in the new location for easy reference.
Dismantle anything you can
Moving things in pieces is a whole lot easier than leaving them as they are and regretting it once the lifting begins. It is awkward and time-consuming to discover too late you should have removed the knobs or feet from certain objects to manoeuvre them out of the building. Think ahead and measure if necessary, those precious few centimetres might be all it takes to prevent hands from being pinched against door-frames or holes being knocked in walls. Make everything you can as smooth and light as possible, remove shelves and drawers and transport them separately if possible. The consequences of dropping a piece of furniture still fully loaded with all kinds of other items are dire indeed.
Make sliders
Why lift and carry something heavy if it can be placed on top of something else and dragged with a whole lot less physical effort? Furniture slides can be purchased in many shapes and sizes if you wish but can also be fashioned from all kinds of other items you might already possess. The rule is to use hard plastic sliders when moving things across soft surfaces and soft, padded sliders when moving things across hard ones. Consider the following suggestions and any other ingenious solutions you can come up with using the resources you have at hand.
- Plastic container covers
- Tarpaulins and plastic dust-sheets
- Frisbees
- Bedspreads
- Towels
- Scraps of carpet
Protect your furniture
Bespoke moving blankets are an invaluable resource when it comes to protecting anything you plan to move and also the locations they must pass through. They can be rented or purchased as you prefer and are a superb way of preventing damage to finishes and delicate edges of all kinds. Wrap any items you are concerned about and secure the blankets with plastic kitchen film, it represents a small, worthwhile expense in the grand scheme of things.
Lift with your legs, not your back
The oldest of all tips when it comes to moving heavy things happens to remain excellent advice. If you bend your back and let the pressure and weight of any object be taken by your spine, you are asking for trouble. Around 75% of all adults suffer from back pain at some point during their lives and yours will come all the sooner if you lift things this way. Whether you use sliders or not, a certain amount of lifting is unavoidable. Bend your knees and get your hands underneath any objects you intend to carry. Hold firmly and let your powerful leg muscles do the lifting.
- Top tip: Be prepared to abort the lift and place the object back down if you feel it is too much for you to lift or your grip is not secure
Carry tall items as upright as possible
Tall objects can be extremely awkward and dangerous to handle and move around, especially if they are top-heavy. Before attempting to move them, be sure to remove any contents from:
- Wardrobes
- Filing cabinets
- Shelving units
Tip the item backwards until the angle is comfortable and the person handling the top end can get a decent purchase. The other person controls the bottom edge, this system prevents the object from swinging around and becoming unwieldy. One added advantage of this method is stairs are made easier to negotiate as the carrying angle is likely to match.
We will include sofas and couches in this category, the main problem with these being the seating surface, which tends to make them too wide for most doors. Stand the sofa on its end and feed or ‘hook’ it through the doorway, rotating it as you go to ease its passage. If the sofa is taller than the doorway when on its end, lower it as you did with the tall items earlier and feed it through top end first. This takes some practice, patience, and perseverance so be sure to have enough hands to take the strain if tiredness is a factor.
Contact us
We hope you find these tips for moving heavy furniture useful and you will manage to execute a perfect move without drama or incident. Should you decide it might be better and generally less stressful to engage the services of the professionals after all, please do not hesitate to contact us. The team at Adlam Transport Removals & Storage will gladly discuss your exact requirements and give you our honest opinion as to the best course of action.