Storage, Shipping & Appliance Repair Guides

When the weather turns cold, a lot of shippers and movers run into the same frustrating problem: packing tape not sticking. The tape goes on, looks fine for a minute, then the edge lifts, the flaps pop open, or the strip peels right off the box in the truck. If you pack in an unheated garage, a cold warehouse or a storage unit, this can happen with tape that worked perfectly all summer. The tape is usually not defective. Packing tape uses a pressure-sensitive adhesive, and cold conditions make t …

Running out of tape halfway through packing is one of the most common moving-day headaches. You have a stack of flat boxes, a room full of belongings, and an empty tape gun. Buy too little and you lose time on an extra store run; buy far too much and the leftovers sit in a drawer for years. So how much packing tape do you need for a move? The answer comes down to simple math: how many boxes you have, how you tape them, and how long each roll is. This guide walks through a quick way to estimate p …

You do not need a dedicated label printer to ship packages from home. If you have an ordinary home or office printer, you can print shipping labels at home on half sheet labels: self-adhesive sheets split into two 8.5 x 5.5 inch labels. You print, peel and stick, with no scissors and no packing tape over a sheet of paper. This guide covers how half sheet labels work, how to set up your printer so the label lands in the right place, and how to fix the most common problems before they cost you a r …

An air cushion machine is only as good as the film you feed it. Buy the wrong air pillow film rolls and you find out at the worst moment: the core does not fit the spindle, the film is too narrow for the machine, or the roll runs out in the middle of a busy shipping day. With holiday order volume ramping up, now is the time to get your refill supply sorted. This guide explains how air pillow film works, the specs to check before you order refills, how to load and store rolls, and how to plan how …

You are halfway through packing a stack of boxes and the packing tape runs out, but there is a roll of duct tape in the junk drawer. It looks tougher, so why not use it? The duct tape vs packing tape question comes up constantly with home sellers, movers and small shops, and the answer is not "whichever is stronger." Each tape is built for a different job, and using the wrong one can mean boxes that pop open, labels that will not scan, or money wasted on tape that does not suit the surface. This …