That's me. And that's my credenza. which probably weighs in somewhere around 300 pounds, maybe more. I'm not kidding — it's a monster. And I weigh about 105 wet. But I was able to move it from one end of the room to the other without breaking much of a sweat and without ending up in the hospital or with residual back pain. How'd I do it? I have a few tricks up my skinny arms.
- Slide don't lift: Unless it's a small piece of furniture, slide it across the room. Most of us don't know how to lift things properly and though we may end up with a beautiful room, we also end up with a bad back. If you do have to lift something, use your legs not your arms and shoulders and keep your back relatively straight.
- Use towels and cardboard: Try slipping something underneath your furniture's legs. Instead of lifting the piece to do this, rock your piece forward or backwards slightly to slide the material underneath the legs. The furniture will move easily across the room. On carpet, try smooth cardboard; on bare floors, towels or dishrags are a good bet.
- Magic Sliders are my favorite go to product. I converted to these a few years ago at the suggestion of my friends at Koontz Hardware. Now I put them on all of my furniture as soon as I get it (instead of using felt pads). Though they're significantly more expensive than the felt pads, they have them beat by a mile for many reasons: they're durable and they make even the heaviest pieces of furniture slip across the room like the Three Stooges on a banana peel.
- Push or Pull: While it seems natural to push a heavy piece, I've actually found pulling to be more effective than pushing on certain pieces of furniture. Place an arm on either side of a piece of furniture and, with your feet a few inches away and using your arms as a brace, lower your body as if you were going to sit, then scooch backwards.
- Empty everything out of it first: Most of us forget to do this and try to move everything when it's all loaded up. Take the time to empty your furniture out. Not only will it make it lighter, it'll prevent something from falling out accidentally and creating a big mess.
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I wonder if the cardboard trick would have worked with my upright piano. That was a real blast to try and move. :P Fortunately, we only had to move it about 10 feet, but it had to be rotated, moved around a bed and fit through a door opening. Fun times.
I use my Flor carpet tile samples carpet side down to glide the furniture across the floor.
What else am I going to do with them?
When in my thirties - I'm an old lady pushing on 64 - I volunteered for a charity that paired me with another woman and off we went in an old panel truck to pick up funiture for their flea markets. We often had to carry old regrigerators and washers. I learned from my partner who was really really good at this. We wore heavy leather gloves, sturdy shoes with rubber soles, and used a heavy 25 foot rope - the yellow nylon 1/2 inch kind - and a hand truck. We tied the rope a few times around the piece and used this as a handle to grab, pull, balance and move. I remember moving a heavy refrigerator down from a third story appartment in a steep flight of stairs. Oh dear!
I recently used the same technique to move a big armoire by myself, leaning it on my forearms so that I could pull it through a couple of doorways and across my appartment, all while walking backwards. The technique reminds me of judo. Destabilizing an object always makes it lighter and easier to move.
"Slide don't lift"
Great way to scratch your wooden floors, chip corners off your furniture legs (Or remove them entirely) extract long yarns from your looped/berber carpet and pull your RTA/IKEA furniture apart at the seams. (I've personally had all of the above happen at one time or another)
Towels, cardboard and Magic Sliders will also leave scratches & gouges in your wooden floors unless the floor and thing you're using to slide on are completely free of dust & dirt - You'd be amazed how a few little grains of sand off your shoes will get caught under the sofa leg and cause the most amazing gouges you've seen since your last vacation to Grand Canyon...
If you care about your furniture and your floors - it's always best to unload the thing and get a friend to help you safely lift and carry it across the room.
bepsf is right. If you care about your floors, don't drag stuff across them.
Cardboard is the answer to lots of problems. Really useful when moving heavy furniture.
I love magic sliders, one of the best things ever. We have carpet through our entire (rented) apartment so floor damage isn't really a problem. I love those things!
If you plan to slide your furniture across wood or laminate floors, PLEASE sweep first. Nothing says carelessness like sand/dirt-induced scuff marks from sliding furniture.
I found anger to be the best help in moving things. Once in a fit of "I'll show her!" rage at a roommate I carried a good sized desk (the old solid wood kind with drawers down each side, and no I did not empty them first!), a couch, and other miscellaneous large items by myself up a steep and narrow set of attic stairs. Looking back, I have no idea how I did it. I vaguely remember just getting underneath things and standing up a bit.
Those hands in that photo look scary. Do you really move furniture with one finger extended? I think sliding seems like a great idea when you're a renter and don't care about the floor.
PhoebeArt—hah!
Pushing or pulling anything with joints along a resistant surface is is sure-fire way to strain those joints and slowly but surely ruin your furniture.
The beauty of those slider disks (a.k.a. "moving men disks") is that they distribute an object's weight onto low-resistance surfaces.
I have back issues, so my trick is "hire someone" -- maybe a neighbor kid, maybe pros...
Last move, we had guys who used some straps that fit around and under heavy items, and are lifted, I think by their forearms. I don't remember the mecahnics of all this, but t heylifted crazy heavy stuff with little apparant effort. (I think two people are required for this methos, though.)
I, too was really impressed by the strap method, which the delivery men used when we got a new washer and dryer.
We recently used the slide method to get a 200lb+ chest into our basement. Works great. And if you're worried about your floors, all you have to do is be sure to use towels/cardboard/sliders and *clean the floors first*. Really, if you love your floors so much, shouldn't you be cleaning them anyway?
I think I would have just asked my friend to stop taking pictures of me and start helping me move the furniture instead.
I've struggled way to long moving all my furniture. In fact, I struggled in general. I tried getting help from people in my neighborhood, but I just felt overwhelmed. I decided to go with a moving company and it was incredibly helpful. I think it was worth the money, but I still wish I had some of these tips. Thanks for sharing them.