Every day we get lots of messages on Facebook and Instagram, but there is one that keeps coming up more frequently than others.
“Hey Foxy, how do you transport …. [fill in the blank]?”
Lamps, lamp shades, fragile items, palm trees, plants, etc. …
We’ve decided to write a quick and easy-to-read article to answer this question once and for all. Hopefully, it helps other Stylists who are looking for a safe way to transport their decorations.
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In our business, we use two types of vehicles for delivering our stock to the property we are styling.
- Truck
- Stylist’s Personal Cars
Read the Insurance for Home Stagers article to learn more about commercial motor insurance.
What goes on the truck?
- Furniture (the bulkiest items get loaded first)
- Linen Bags (used as padding to fill any gaps between the furniture items)
- Artwork, incl. mirrors (loaded last and strapped securely to the wall of the truck)
- Floor lamps (lamp shades removed)
- Palm trees, fig trees
- Rugs
What goes inside the Stylist’s car?
- All decorations (divided into buckets – more on this topic further down in this article)
- Lamp shades
- Bedside lamps
- Steamer
- Toolbox
How Do We Pack Fragile Items?
Most of our decorations are considered fragile – ceramic vases, crockery, glass bottles, you name it.
We use these plastic tubs (you can get them from Kmart or BigW for under $5 each) and fill them with sheets of bubble wrap that we’ve re-purposed from our stock deliveries.
The bubble wrap functions as a base, as well as a wall in between each fragile item. We tend to take extra care with certain items that are a bit more fragile than others (e.g. glass trinkets) and wrap them in an individual sheet of bubble wrap.
When it comes to packing the buckets, each of our Stylists has their own preferred way of doing it.
For example, some like to place the books upright and lean them against the wall of the bucket, some prefer to use them as a base or a divider between bedside lamps. There really is no right or wrong way of doing this, as long as the decorations get to and from the property in one piece.
TIP: If you buy these buckets, we recommend not carrying it by the handles as they are quite easy to snap off.
Lamps & Lampshades
Storage:
We always take the shades off the lamps, not just for safe transportation but for storage purposes as well. With the limited space in our warehouse, it’s much more compact to stack the shades on top of each other than keeping them attached to the lamps.
To ensure we don’t lose track of the matching pairs, we have marked them with the same colour tape followed by a number or a symbol.
Transportation:
The safest way to transport lamp shades without risking them being caved-in or torn is stacking them into each other and placing them on top of the buckets in the car or on the passenger seat.
Bedside lamps get placed into the buckets, which then get loaded into the Stylist’s car.
Floor lamps get transported in the truck.
What Do We Do When Something Breaks?
Even though we always try to exercise as much caution as possible, sometimes breakages happen. Depending on the type and extent of the damage, we can either try to glue it together or we cut our losses and dispose of the decoration.
We are covered for accidental damages in the warehouse and during transit, but most times it’s not worth paying the access and risking increase of the premium just to cover a few broken items.
Read Insurance for Home Stagers
Efficiency is Key.
Some Stylists may look at the buckets, see a lot of items loose and think ‘that does not look safe’.
Here’s the thing.
Our primary business focus is efficiency. We want to be known for being fast, reliable, and flexible, which means we don’t spend an excessive amount of time packing and wrapping each individual decorative item.
By now, we have learned what is and isn’t safe when it comes to safe transportation of our stock. Buckets filled with bubble wrap proved themselves to be a safe and effective way for us to get the job done, but we understand it’s not for everyone.
Thank you for reading!
If you have any more questions about how we transport our stock, please do not hesitate to leave a comment below and we’ll attempt to answer it as soon as possible!
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