Posts by mibox

Every move produces one box you open with your breath held — the one with grandma’s china, the framed prints, the stemware you only use at Thanksgiving. And every New Hampshire road seems to have a frost heave with your name on it, whether you’re headed down Route 106 out of Concord or up I-93 toward the lakes. The good news: broken glass on moving day is almost always a packing problem, not bad luck. Pack fragile items the right way and they’ll ride out the bumps just fine.

Start With the Right Materials

Fragile packing lives or dies on what you wrap things in. Newspaper is free, but the ink transfers onto dishes and it compresses to nothing under weight. Spend a few dollars on the basics and you’ll save yourself the heartbreak later. A quick trip to a hardware store in Tilton or Laconia for proper supplies costs less than replacing one broken heirloom.

• Small, sturdy boxes — heavy items belong in small boxes so the total weight stays liftable and the bottom doesn’t blow out.
• Packing paper (unprinted newsprint) and a roll or two of bubble wrap for anything with glass.
• Real packing tape, not masking or duct tape, and double-tape every box seam on the bottom.
• Dish-pack cell dividers or clean towels and blankets to fill gaps — empty space is where breakage happens.

Wrapping the Items People Break Most

Different shapes need different handling. Here’s how to protect the four categories that account for most moving-day casualties.

1. Plates and dishes. Wrap each one individually, then stand them on edge in the box like records in a crate — never lay them flat and stack them. Plates take far more pressure vertically than face-down.
2. Glasses and stemware. Stuff a little paper inside the bowl of each glass, wrap the outside, and use a divided box so they can’t knock into each other. Wine glasses get an extra wrap around the stem.
3. Mirrors, art, and framed photos. Tape a big X across the glass so a crack can’t spread, wrap in bubble wrap or a moving blanket, and pack on edge between mattresses or upright against a wall — never flat where something can land on top.
4. Lamps and odd shapes. Remove bulbs and shades, wrap the base and the harp separately, and nest shades inside one another with paper between. Odd shapes ride best boxed on their own with plenty of padding.

Loading Fragile Boxes Into Your Container

How you pack the box matters; how you load the container matters just as much. With a MI-BOX portable storage container, you’re loading at ground level right in your own driveway, so you skip the ramp bounce and the second lift-and-drop that a rental truck forces on you. Heavy on the bottom, light and fragile on top — and load your fragile boxes last so they ride at the top of the stack. Fill every gap so nothing shifts when the container is picked up. Our Level Lift system keeps the box steady during pickup and delivery, which is exactly the jostle that cracks poorly loaded glass.

A few loading habits go a long way. Build a flat, stable base of heavy boxes and furniture first so your fragile boxes have a level surface to sit on. Slide framed art and mirrors upright into the gaps beside dressers or the mattress, where they’re wedged in place and can’t tip. And leave yourself a walking lane to the doors — you’ll thank yourself when it’s time to pull the fragile boxes out first and set them somewhere safe before the heavy lifting starts.

Common Fragile-Packing Mistakes

• Overpacking big boxes. A box of dishes can hit 40 pounds fast. Keep fragile boxes small so they stay easy to carry and don’t collapse under their own weight.
• Leaving air gaps. A half-full box lets contents slide and slam. Top off every box with crumpled paper or a towel until nothing moves when you gently shake it.
• Skipping the label. Mark every side FRAGILE and note which room it belongs to. A box that reads “Kitchen — Fragile” gets set down gently and unpacked first.
• Packing glass warm and sealing it cold. Condensation forms inside the wrap when a warm-packed box hits a cold container. Pack and store at a consistent temperature when you can.

Storing Fragile Items for the Long Haul

If your container is going to sit for a few months — a renovation, a home sale in between closings, or a season away — pack fragile boxes with long-term storage in mind from the start. Keep them off the container floor on a pallet or a layer of blankets, store them toward the middle of the load away from the doors and exterior walls, and resist stacking anything heavy on top no matter how tempting the space looks. Whether you go with an 8ft, 16ft, or 20ft MI-BOX, the same rule holds: fragile items stay dry, cushioned, and near the center. Do that, and the box you held your breath over will open exactly the way you packed it.

Local NH Cities We Deliver To

We deliver portable storage containers across Central, Southern, and Western NH. Most-requested cities: Concord, Laconia, Manchester, Meredith, Gilford, and Tilton. Don’t see your town? We probably deliver there too — get a quote.

The flat-screen that survived three moves cracks in storage. The desktop that ran fine for years won’t boot after a winter in the garage. Across New Hampshire, electronics are some of the first things people box up and some of the most likely to come out damaged — not because they are fragile in the usual sense, but because they do not handle a Concord winter or a humid Lakes Region July the way a couch does. A little extra care at pack-out is the difference between plugging back in and shopping for a replacement.

Why Electronics Don’t Store Like Everything Else

Furniture rides out a temperature swing without complaint. Electronics don’t. The circuit boards, screens, and batteries inside your devices react to cold, heat, and moisture in ways that often show up weeks or months later:

• Condensation is the real threat. When a cold device meets warm, humid air, moisture forms on the boards inside — the same way a glass sweats in summer. That moisture is what shorts things out.
• LCD and OLED screens can develop lines, blotches, or dead pixels if they freeze or bake. A closed container in a July heat wave runs far hotter than the air outside.
• Lithium batteries in laptops, tablets, and cordless tools drain, degrade, and in rare cases swell when they sit fully charged or fully dead for months.
• Dust and static settle on exposed ports and boards, and dust that lands during storage bakes on once the device heats back up.

Pack Electronics in Four Steps

Run every device through the same short routine before it goes in the container. It adds an hour or two to your pack-out and prevents nearly every problem we see:

1. Back up and photograph. Copy important files off computers and phones first — storage is not a backup. Then snap a photo of the back of each device showing which cable goes where. Reconnecting a TV or PC months later is far faster with a picture than from memory.
2. Power down and pull batteries. Fully shut down (not sleep) and unplug. Remove batteries from remotes, cameras, and cordless tools so a leaking cell can’t ruin the device, and store loose batteries in a labeled bag that travels with you — not in the container.
3. Use original boxes, or wrap smartly. The foam-fit original box is still the best protection for a TV or monitor. No box? Wrap the screen in a moving blanket (never bubble wrap pressed against the glass for the long term) and stand it upright like a plate, never flat with weight on top.
4. Bag and label every cable. Coil cords loosely, band them, and drop each device’s cables in a labeled zip bag taped to that device. Nothing wastes an unpacking afternoon like a tangle of anonymous black cables.

Screens, Towers, and Anything With a Battery

A few categories deserve extra thought. Flat-screen TVs and monitors should always stand vertical and be boxed or blanket-wrapped — laid flat, the panel flexes under its own weight and can crack. Desktop towers store fine upright, as long as the side vents aren’t crushed against another box. Printers should have their ink and toner cartridges pulled so nothing leaks, and gaming consoles do best in their original boxes with the discs taken out. For anything with a lithium battery — laptops, tablets, drones, cordless tools — the sweet spot for long storage is roughly half charged, which is easier on the cell than full or empty. In a MI-BOX parked in your own driveway, you can keep these items near the door and grab a laptop or the router back out for a week without unpacking the whole load.

Common Electronics-Packing Mistakes

• Powering on too soon. Reaching for the power button before a cold device warms up is the number-one cause of storage failures. Wait it out.
• Sealing devices in plastic. Airtight plastic traps humidity against the electronics. Use breathable blankets and let air move around each piece.
• Storing screens flat. Stacked or laid down under other boxes, panels bow and crack. Upright, always.
• Leaving batteries installed and charged. A full charge plus months of summer heat is hard on lithium cells and invites leaks from alkaline ones.

Bringing Your Electronics Back Online

When it’s time to reconnect, work in the right order: bring everything indoors, let it reach room temperature, then wipe off any dust before powering up. Pull out those labeled cable bags and the photos you took, and reassembly goes quickly. Do the prep right in July and the home theater or office you packed comes back in spring working exactly as it did — no cracked panels, no dead drives, no mystery cables. That is the whole point of storing smart: what goes in is what comes out.

Local NH Cities We Deliver To

We deliver portable storage containers across Central and Southern NH. Most-requested cities: Manchester, Nashua, Concord, Bedford, Merrimack, and Derry. Don’t see your town? We probably deliver there too — get a quote.

One of the real advantages of a portable storage container is that it sits right in your own driveway in Bedford or beside the barn in Gilford — not behind a chain-link fence across town. Your belongings stay where you can see them. But a container parked at the curb during a long remodel still deserves a few minutes of thought about security, because the easiest break-in is always the one nobody planned against. The good news: keeping a MI-BOX secure in New Hampshire is mostly about a handful of cheap, simple habits.

Start With the Right Lock

The single biggest upgrade is the lock itself. A standard hardware-store padlock with an exposed shackle is the first thing a bolt cutter finds. For a storage container, you want a lock that gives those tools nothing to grab:

• Choose a disc (puck) lock or a hidden-shackle padlock — the round body leaves no exposed loop to cut.
• Look for a hardened steel or boron alloy body, not zinc, which shears easily in cold weather.
• Match the lock to the container’s locking hardware so the shackle seats fully and can’t be pried.
• Keep a spare key somewhere other than the kitchen junk drawer the movers can see — a lost key on a sealed container means a cut lock and a delay.

Placement Is Half the Security

Where the container sits matters as much as how it’s locked. A thief wants privacy and time, so take both away. When your MI-BOX is delivered, think about positioning before the driver sets it down:

1. Face the doors toward the house. Point the container’s doors at a wall, a fence, or your own home so they can’t be opened without standing in full view.
2. Park it in the light. A spot under an existing porch light or motion sensor is worth more than any alarm. Darkness is a burglar’s best friend.
3. Keep it visible from the road and neighbors. Counterintuitively, a container people can see is safer than one tucked behind the garage where someone can work unobserved.
4. Leave room to inspect. Don’t wedge it so tightly against a structure that you can’t walk the full perimeter to check the seams and hinges.

Layer Your Security

No single measure stops everything, so stack a few inexpensive layers. Each one adds time and visibility, and time and visibility are what send an opportunist looking elsewhere. None of this requires a security system or a monthly subscription — most of it is gear you may already own:

• A camera that already exists. A weatherproof game camera or a doorbell cam pointed at the container does double duty — it also records the delivery and pickup, which is handy if anything is ever disputed.
• Motion lighting. Solar motion lights mounted on a tree or the eave cover the corners your porch light misses, and they cost nothing to run.
• Discretion. A container that obviously holds a remodel’s worth of appliances is a more tempting target than one nobody thinks twice about. Keep the doors closed during the day, not propped open while you work.
• A neighbor’s eyes. In most NH neighborhoods, telling the person next door that a container will be in your driveway for a few weeks is the cheapest alarm system there is.

Common Security Mistakes to Avoid

• Trusting a builder-grade padlock. The lock that came in the moving-supply aisle is the weakest link on the whole container. Replace it before you load anything valuable.
• Storing valuables you don’t need to store. Jewelry, firearms, cash, and irreplaceable documents belong in the house, not in a container in the driveway — no matter how good the lock is.
• Leaving the keys with everyone. The more people who can open it, the less secure it is. Keep access to one or two people during a move.
• Forgetting to check it. A container you never look at is one a problem can sit in for weeks. A glance every few days during a project is enough.

Insurance and Documentation

Before you fill a container, take five minutes to protect what’s going in it. Photograph each row as you load, keep a short inventory on your phone, and check whether your homeowner’s or renter’s policy covers belongings stored on your property in a portable container — many do, but the coverage and limits vary, so it’s worth a quick call to your agent rather than an assumption. If you’re storing for a business or a jobsite, ask specifically about off-premises and tools coverage. Good documentation turns a worst-case scenario from a guessing game into a straightforward claim.

It also helps to note the lock and serial details somewhere safe. Snap a photo of your lock’s key number and the container’s identifying marks when it’s delivered, and keep our dispatch line handy at 603-369-4464. If you ever lose a key or need access arranged, that information turns a half-day headache into a short phone call. The same record makes a police report faster and more useful in the rare event you ever need one.

Security Is Mostly Good Habits

The reason so many New Hampshire homeowners and contractors choose a MI-BOX over a self-storage unit across town is control: the container is on your land, on your schedule, and under your own lights. Pair that with a real disc lock, smart placement, and a camera you already own, and a portable container is one of the more secure ways to store things short of a vault. Prep it right when it’s delivered, and you can stop thinking about it and get back to the move.

Local NH Cities We Deliver To

We deliver portable storage containers across Central, Southern, and Western NH. Most-requested cities: Bedford, Gilford, Manchester, Concord, Hooksett, and Goffstown. Don’t see your town? We probably deliver there too — get a quote.