5 Tricks for Moving Furniture
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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
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.