How to Move Sentimental Items Safely

At All My Sons Moving & Storage, we firmly believe that things matter. 

Everything you choose to take with you into your next home means something significant to you. A kitchen crockpot that you inherited from your grandmother. Your child’s most beloved toy. The vinyl record of the song that played for your first dance on your wedding day. These things have value beyond their monetary price tag to replace. They’re sentimental.

When you make your next emotional relocation, you want to keep all these precious items safe and secure. A smooth move starts with dependable movers who will treat your things with the utmost respect, as if they belonged to beloved family members. You can even have everything handled for you with professional packing services, so that all your items are prepared for transport by experts. 

If you are packing yourself, here are some tips for moving sentimental items safely.

While different items will need slightly different care, there are a few universal rules for packing fragile and sentimental items that you can keep in mind as you pack.  

• Choose the Ideal Box for the Job: The best box to house your sentimental item is one that is just large enough to comfortably accommodate the item without a lot of extra space. Heavier items should go into smaller boxes, and lighter items can go into larger boxes. Specialty boxes for items like dishes, electronics, and picture frames provide the ideal packing environment for transporting these items, and they are often worth the extra investment.

• Pack the Heaviest Items First: Create a stable base in your box by putting the heaviest items inside first. This helps to balance boxes better so that if items shift in transit then lighter items will not get crushed. 

• Fill All Empty Space With Packing Material: Empty space in your boxes is space your sentimental items could shift around in. Items that shift around in their boxes are liable to get damaged. Fill all the empty space in your box with bubble wrap, packing paper, packing peanuts, or soft items from your home like clothes and kitchen towels.

Packing mementos from your favorite time periods takes special care. An old baseball from your afternoons in little league, a yearbook from senior year, or a collage your child created for you on their first day of kindergarten all require different methods of packing to ensure their safe arrival at your next home.

• Choose a Preservation Technique: Items you are keeping for nostalgia’s sake should be carefully preserved to ensure their longevity. Pictures, certificates, and kids’ artwork pieces can be laminated, framed, put into scrapbooks, or scanned into a digital file. 3D pieces like knick-knacks and old craft projects can be put into shadow boxes that you can display in your next home.

• Pack into Small Boxes: Items that are not easily put into frames like ceramic figures, trophies, or certain kids’ crafts should be packed into small boxes. Remember to use the smallest box that can comfortably accommodate the item, and fill any extra space with packing material.

• Label Boxes as Fragile: As some memorabilia items are extremely delicate, you should label boxes with the word ‘FRAGILE’ so you and your movers know to take extra caution with those boxes. If the memorabilia items in your box need to be oriented a certain way to stay intact, mark the box with a ‘THIS SIDE UP’ arrow.

Most memorabilia items, like holiday decorations and off-season clothes, can be packed for a move first thing. You should be able to manage with these items sitting in boxes for a little while. Once you have made the move, these items will be some of the last things that you unpack.

If you keep physical photographs or mementos like playbills, ticket stubs, and cards in photo albums, you know there’s something very special about being able to flip through and hold your captured moments. 

• Dust Your Albums: Take a microfiber cloth and run it over the spines, covers, and pages of your photo albums. Dust and grim has a tendency to fester in a dark moving box, so now is the right time to clean off your albums. 

• Check for Loose Photos: Flip through your photo albums and check their condition. Any loose photographs should be re-adhered to their pages, or if that is not possible then they should be packed in photo boxes with any other loose photographs.  

• Create Digital Backups of Special Pieces: Your most prized photographs should be backed up digitally. Keeping a digital backup of your photo albums on a hard drive or in an online cloud allows you to preserve your pictures for years to come, even in the event of a home disaster like a fire or a flood. 

• Pack Photo Albums into Small Moving Boxes: As photo albums add up in weight very quickly, you should pack them into smaller boxes to ensure they can be moved safely. All My Sons Moving & Storage recommends you use the same boxes you would use for books, disc media, or vinyl records. 

Photo albums serve as an archival history of where you’ve been. If you are putting any photo albums into storage, you should choose a temperature-regulated unit to ensure your photo albums stay safe from extreme heat and cold.

Original paintings, framed canvases, and decorative banners light up your walls and bring joy to your heart whenever you see them. If you’re an art lover, you want all the beautiful pieces you’ve collected over the years to make the move with you. That expressive art should make the move so it can grace the walls of your next home.

• Tape an ‘X’ on Glass and Mirrors: If your art piece has a glass face or if you are moving a mirror, use some painter’s tape to put an ‘X’ on that frame from corner to corner. Painter’s tape has an adhesive just strong enough to stay in place without leaving residue on your glass. This will help to keep the glass from shattering, and in the event it does break then the pieces are less likely to scatter. 

• Protect Art Faces with Glassine: If you have loose canvases then put a sheet of glassine paper over the face of the art to protect it from damage. Glassine is typically water and grease resistant, and it will keep your art piece looking great while it gets transported.

• Roll Posters into Shipping Tubes: Remove any adhesive on posters and prints and roll them into shipping tubes to protect them during the move. 

• Pack Art into Boxes Vertically: If your art pieces are small enough to pack into moving boxes together then orient them vertically, on their edge, inside their moving boxes. 

Artwork and décor items can also be packed first-thing. Once you reach your destination they will be one of the last items you unpack, but when they’re up on your new walls then your place will really start to feel like home.

The clothes you wear and keep on hand are an essential part of your self-expression. Whether you’re dressing up in the bright red dress or going casual in the jeans and t-shirt, your clothing says a lot about who you are and what you value in life. 

Some pieces, like wedding dresses, baby clothes, and band t-shirts, you may keep long after they stop fitting anyone in your household. Whatever sentimental reason you’re choosing to hang onto those clothes for, you need them to make the move with you too.

Pack your clothing with care by taking the following steps.

• Separate Essential Clothes: Some of your clothing you will want to unpack first-thing when you reach your next home so that it can be available to you during the week as you unpack the rest of your boxes. Choose some weather-appropriate outfits to keep in essentials boxes. 

• Use Wardrobe Boxes: No need to fold. You can save time and prevent wrinkles in hanging clothes by packing them into wardrobe boxes. These boxes have a bar in the top so you can hang your clothes inside. Simply transfer the contents of your closet into the wardrobe box and seal the box. 

• Attain Garment Bags for Highly Sensitive Items: Formal clothing items like wedding dresses, ball gowns, and tuxedos should be placed in garment bags for extra protection. These garment bags can then be hung in wardrobe boxes or transported individually. 

• Watch What You Put in Vacuum-Seal Bags: Some materials like silk, cashmere, and leather can permanently wrinkle when stored in vacuum-seal bags during a move. Vacuum-Seal bags work best for bulky winter clothing items or items that will not be in vacuum-storage for extended periods of time. 

Clothing items will be some of the last items you pack at your previous home and the first items you unpack at your destination. 

Collections of figurines, mugs, books, cards, and other fun items might take up shelf space at your current home. Whether you’ve a jewelry aficionado or you adore dollhouses, the items you collect hold a special significance to you and hanging onto them brings you joy. 

• Wrap Pieces Individually: While it might seem economically to use as little packing material as possible, you should aim to protect each individual piece. Special edition books should be individually wrapped with acid-free paper to separate the delicate covers from other books. Mugs going into small moving boxes should be wrapped in soft kitchen items or bubble wrap.

• Use Dividers: Use existing cardboard dividers or create your own dividers to separate pieces in a collection. For example, tall and thin figurines could potentially be packed into boxes designed for stemware. Just wrap the figurines and put them into the compartments for the stemware. 

• Create an Inventory: The happiest collectors will delight in taking inventory of all the specialty items they’ve accumulated over the years. An inventory can help the collector keep track of what they already have, especially during a move. A record of a valuable collection will also help with insurance claims in the event of a home disaster.

Once all the collectibles are packed, mark your boxes as ‘FRAGILE’ and prepare to make the move. When your new shelves are put up at your next home, you can delight in unpacking all your beautiful collections.

From special mementos of days gone by to your prized collections, packing sentimental items takes care, patience, and a little expertise. Don’t trust your valuable memories to just anyone, choose All My Sons Moving & Storage.

All My Sons remains committed to the traditional values of transparency and attentive customer care. We aim to lend an honest helping hand, whether that’s supporting our charity partners, our favorite sports teams, or your family move. Get a quote from All My Sons for your next move, and turn the page into your next chapter with your precious sentimental items intact.