It’s important to bear in mind that the process of moving from one home to another can be dangerous, especially when it involves, as it often does, the need for lifting and carrying heavy furniture out of the home and many times – down or up the stairs too.
Unfortunately, personal injuries are never out of the question when moving house, so you must do whatever it takes to ensure that your moving day goes injury-free from start to finish. During that highly unpredictable house move period, you just have to use your common sense and take all safety steps to prevent getting hurt in the process.
One of the most common injuries when moving house is back injuries. Move-related back injuries can range from mild ones that can cause slight discomfort for a few days to much more serious and painful ones such as herniated disks that could require surgery.
Save your back!
Read on to learn how to protect your back when moving house – while packing and lifting heavy furniture.
WHY you must avoid back injuries at all costs
The most common back injuries when moving house are back strains, pinched nerves, and herniated disks. Serious Moving day accidents may also lead to more severe back injuries – for example, fractured vertebrae.
Any type of back injury will be painful, and while some will most likely limit your movements temporarily and create a troublesome discomfort, some will require treatment – medications, injections, icing, extended rest, and/or physical therapy. Some extremely bad cases of back injuries may require invasive procedures (surgery) or could even lead to temporary disability or worse – permanent disability.
When you lift and carry lightweight or slightly heavy objects, the strain is handled by the muscles of your arms, so your back stays mostly strain-free and is therefore safe against anything bad happening to it. However, when you try to lift and carry heavy objects such as furniture pieces or household appliances, then a far greater amount of strain goes to your back muscles too.
As a general rule, back muscles are weak and cannot handle heavy loads safely. Therefore, to avoid hurting your back during a move, you’re going to have to use a number of precautionary measures such as
- recognizing the limits of your body,
- using the right lifting techniques,
- using the proper moving equipment, and
- getting help, either from reliable friends or from professional movers.
See below for more details.
Check it out: 7 Safety tips every mover should know
How to protect your back when packing
You should know how important it is to lift and carry heavy furniture the right way to save your back. But moving bulky furniture is not the only time during a move where you should take care of your back. Believe it or not, the packing task also hides a number of possible painful scenarios for your back – especially the lower back.
Here are a couple of good ways to protect your back when packing for a move:
Pack on a table or a counter
Clear enough space on a table or a counter and use it as your packing hub to protect your belongings for transportation. When wrapping up glasses, plates, bowls, and other fragile (kitchen) items from cabinets, cupboards, and drawers, you’ll want to be standing upright and never hunched over the floor or an uncomfortably low surface like a coffee table.
When standing upright while packing your stuff, you’ll prevent back pain by not having to bend over too frequently or no having to stay hunched over for a prolonged period of time.
Position boxes on top of other boxes
Another thing you should do to prevent hurting your back when packing for a move is to place the box you’re packing at the moment on top of something else to avoid having to bend over too often when arranging wrapped up items inside the cardboard container.
Set the box you’re currently working on a box you’ve already packed up or a chair (stool) of the right height not only to speed up the packing task but also to save your back from unnecessary back-bending which can often lead to back pains.
Keep in mind that the less you have to bed over when packing for a move, the better your back will feel and the more energy you’ll manage to save during that most energy-draining job during a house move.
Good to know: How to prevent accidents and injuries on Moving day
How to protect your back when moving heavy furniture
It’s critical that you complete your residential move without any injuries whatsoever. And now that you know that hurting your back is the most common type of move-related injuries, let’s take a closer look at how to avoid back injuries when lifting heavy furniture.
Basically, there are 4 ways to protect your back when moving heavy items during a move:
Use your common sense
Do your best to recognize the physical limits of your own body and don’t try to be a hero by pushing it too far, more than you can actually handle.
If a box feels really heavy when you try to lift it off the ground, then it’s too heavy for you so you’ll need to find another way to take it safely out of the home than to carry it with your own two hands.
Know your limits – if a furniture piece or a household appliance is too big and heavy for you, then you shouldn’t try to lift and move it by yourself because the risk of injury, especially back injury, is just too great.
Read also: Common house moving injuries
Use the right lifting techniques
One proven way to protect your back when moving heavy furniture is to use lifting techniques that won’t put too much strain on your back.
Here are the most important lifting techniques to remember:
- Have a proper back posture. Be sure to keep your upper back straight at all times, keep your shoulders back, and have your eyes looking straight ahead.
- Bend your knees, not the back. This is pivotal – you should always bend your knees and NOT your back in order to let the much stronger leg muscles do the hard work. Basically, using your strong leg muscles will reduce the strain from your weak back muscles.
- Move your feet, do NOT twist your back. When carrying heavy items, you should never bend or twist your back to avoid a back injury. Instead, move your feet with the heavy load if you wish to turn.
Must-read: 10 proper lifting techniques when moving furniture
Use proper moving equipment
To avoid hurting your back during the move, you should always use a moving dolly to wheel heavy furniture items and heavyweight boxes out of the home. Why should you lift and carry heavy objects by hand when you can load them on a moving dolly – either an appliance dolly (2 wheels) or a furniture dolly (4 wheels)?
Rent or purchase the right type of dolly in your relocation case and save yourself from a possible back injury. Also, be sure to use furniture sliders to slide huge and heavy furniture items easily across the room – effortlessly and more importantly – injury-free.
See also: What moving equipment to have when moving by yourself
Get reliable helpers
Another way to save your back from getting hurt is to ask some of your most trustworthy friends to give you hand with the almost unavoidable heavy lifting on Moving day. The thing is that the more helpers you manage to convince to help you out, the easier and safer the entire home moving operation will be.
Useful info: How to get friends to help you move
Nevertheless, the best way to avoid back injuries when moving house is to leave all the heavy lifting to professional movers who know what it takes to maintain safety during a house move.
Yes, it’ll cost you money to hire furniture movers but you should also factor in the possibility of you sustaining a back injury of some sort on the day of the move – a highly undesirable outcome that would bring you not only pain and suffering, but could also force you to miss work and thus lose money.
See also: Do you really need furniture movers?
