The most difficult things to pack are the fragile ones and the more fragile the most difficult, as you may well imagine. Shape can also play a part in making it even more difficult. Imagine needing to pack antiques, fine art, ceramics, glass or even light bulbs for shipping, whether you will transfer them yourself or not.
Bubble wrap is a great boon in this field. Formerly, fragile items were packed in newspapers and even straw. Indeed, newspapers are still used fairly effectively by some packagers in order to save money although bubble wrap is quite inexpensive.
The easiest fragile items to pack for shipment or transportation are flat items like photographs and paintings. If the photograph is framed, it is best to wrap it in two layers of bubble wrap and then insert it into a flat, corrugated cardboard box.
There are various sized boxes which will hold one or several pictures and the boxes vary in area too. It is important that the contents of the shipping box fit closely inside and cannot rattle around inside.
The more the contents can move, the more chance there is that the box will break and the contents will be lost or damaged. The further you are transporting the things, the more vital this rule is.
If you are sending oil paintings on canvas or water colours on paper, it is easier to roll them up loosely, say around a rolled up newspaper and then insert the package into a cardboard or polystyrene tube. The tube may be round or triangular. Pad the ends of the roll to prevent it moving back and forth.
Manufacturers encourage customers to keep all original packaging, but it does build up if you do not have much space. While transporting televisions, monitors or microwave ovens, it is better to use the original polystyrene packing and the original cardboard container.
If you do not have these items, you could buy a box to transport these items and you will have to wrap it in bubble wrap and pack the corners of the box with newspapers. If you are merely moving the TV from one house to another, you can wrap it in blankets and maybe place it in a box to prevent it rolling around.
If you want to send or transport crockery, you can line a cardboard box with two layers of bubble wrap, wrap each plate in a sheet of newspaper and stack them in the box. Be certain that they cannot move from side to side with more newspaper packing.
A dearer, but more professional way of doing this is to fill a box with polystyrene balls and slide the plates into it carefully. You can often purchase the polystyrene balls by the sackful in outdoor markets.
If you are anxious about newsprint coming off on the items in the box, you could purchase a substantial roll of recycled paper for not a lot of money. Whatever you spend on packaging when sending to a customer, it is probably much less than sending a replacement.
Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with boxes for shipping art. If you want to know more go to Where Can I Buy Shipping Boxes?