Fragile items break for two reasons: poor packing and poor stacking. Both are entirely preventable, and neither requires special talent — only the right materials and a willingness to spend an extra ninety seconds per box.
This is how professional crews do it, category by category. The same rules apply whether you are going four blocks in Oak Park or across the country.
We pack a lot of breakables in older Chicagoland housing stock — the china, mirrors and framed art in Hinsdale and Winnetka homes are usually the pieces worth crating rather than boxing.
Start with the right materials
Use new, double-walled boxes for anything breakable. Free grocery-store boxes are inconsistent, sometimes damp, and fail exactly when they are carried down a staircase. The savings do not survive one broken box of dishes.
Stock packing paper — plain newsprint, not printed newspaper, which transfers ink onto china. Bubble wrap for electronics and awkward shapes. Dish barrels with cell dividers for glassware. Mirror and picture cartons for flat items. Foam corners for framed art. Quality tape, applied in both directions on the bottom of every box.
Buy more paper than you think you need. Under-packing is the most common failure, and running out at 10 p.m. is how people end up wrapping wine glasses in a bath towel.
Box size is a structural decision
Small boxes for dense items: dishes, glassware, books, canned goods, tools. Medium boxes for general kitchen and household. Large boxes only for light bulk — pillows, bedding, lampshades, plastic bins.
A large box packed with dishes will fail. Not might — will, given enough stairs. The weight exceeds what the corrugation and the tape were designed to hold, and the person carrying it cannot control it well either.
Aim for boxes you can lift comfortably with two hands. If a box needs a grunt, repack it into two.
Dishes and glassware
Line the bottom of the box with two to three inches of crumpled paper. Wrap each plate individually, then stack them in pairs and wrap the pairs. Load them standing on edge, like records in a crate — never flat. Flat-stacked plates break under their own weight in transit; plates on edge almost never do.
Glassware and stemware go into cell dividers, each piece wrapped in a paper sleeve with paper stuffed into the bowl. Stems are the weak point, so pack them upright and never lay a wine glass on its side under weight.
Fill every remaining void with paper and close the box. Then lift it and shake gently. If anything moves, open it and add more paper. A box that rattles is a box with something broken in it by the time it arrives.
Mark it and mean it
Write FRAGILE on the top and at least two sides, plus the destination room and contents. Add THIS SIDE UP with an arrow for dish and stemware boxes. A crew that can read the box will stack it correctly; a crew that cannot will treat it like books.
Art, mirrors, and framed pieces
Tape a large X of painter's tape across the glass of framed pieces. It does not prevent breakage, but it holds shards together if the glass does break, which protects the artwork itself and whoever opens the box.
Wrap in paper, then bubble wrap, then use foam corner protectors and a mirror carton sized so the piece does not slide. Pack flat items upright and load them standing vertically against the wall of the truck, never lying flat with weight on top.
Genuinely valuable pieces — original art, large glass tabletops, marble, antique mirrors — should be crated rather than boxed. That is a materials-and-planning decision that has to be made before move day, so mention them at estimate time and we will bring what the job needs.
Electronics
Original cartons are best because the foam was molded for the device. If you do not have them, double-box: wrap the item, place it in a snug box, then place that box inside a larger one with two inches of padding on every side.
Photograph the back of the television and any desk or entertainment setup before unplugging. Bag and label every cable. Remove ink cartridges from printers, discs from drives, and batteries from anything that will sit for a while.
In winter, let electronics come back to room temperature for several hours before powering on. Condensation from a cold truck to a warm room causes more failures than the cold itself. Our winter moving guide covers the rest of the cold-weather list.
Lamps, ceramics, and awkward shapes
Lamps come apart: shade, harp, bulb, base. Pack shades nested in a large box with paper between them and nothing on top of them — a crushed shade is the most common casualty of a rushed pack. Wrap bases individually and pack them upright.
Ceramics, vases, and sculpture get the same treatment as glassware: wrap, cushion, stand upright, fill voids. Anything with a protruding element — a handle, a spout, an arm — needs extra padding around that element specifically, because that is where it will break.
For irregular items, the guiding question is simple: if this box were turned upside down and set down firmly, would anything inside touch a wall? If yes, add padding.
Furniture with fragile components
Glass tabletops, stone and marble surfaces, and mirrored furniture are the pieces most often damaged on a move, and almost always because they were treated as furniture rather than as glass. Remove glass tops and pack them separately in a mirror carton, standing upright, never lying flat.
Marble and stone travel on edge for the same reason a sheet of glass does: laid flat and unsupported, they crack under their own weight over a bumpy mile. Wrap in pads, then cardboard, then move them vertically and stand them vertically in the truck.
Curio cabinets and china hutches should be emptied completely, including the glass shelves, which are removed and packed like any other flat glass. The doors get taped or wrapped closed so they cannot swing on a staircase.
Labeling, inventory, and coverage
Number every fragile box and keep a short list of what is in each. If a claim ever becomes necessary, an itemized list plus photographs is the difference between a resolved claim and a conversation about what you think was in the box.
Photograph valuable items before packing, ideally with a scale reference and a close-up of any existing damage. This takes ten minutes for an average household and is the single best insurance-adjacent thing you can do.
Understand the coverage distinction: owner-packed cartons are typically excluded from mover liability, since the mover cannot verify what went in or how. If a category matters enough that you would file a claim over it, have it packed professionally so it is covered.
Loading matters as much as packing
A perfectly packed box still breaks if a wardrobe box lands on it. Fragile cartons ride on top, near the front of the load, never under weight, and never in the last-minute gap-filling layer.
Tell the crew which boxes are fragile as they load rather than relying only on the marker. And be honest about owner-packed cartons — most coverage excludes them, so anything irreplaceable is worth having packed professionally as part of packing and unpacking.
If you would rather hand the whole category off, that is a normal request. Get a quote with fragile-only packing included and compare it against the cost of replacing one thing you cannot replace.