Packing fragile items can be a daunting task. Today we will cover packing china plates, bowls and saucers. Cups and stemware will be our next topic. Why break these into separate topics? Because you NEVER want to ship plates, bowls and saucers together with cups and stemware! Plates, bowls and saucers are a lot heavier than cups and stemware, so the risk of breakage is very high if you pack these items together.

Packing china is not difficult but it is a time consuming and material intensive process. Let’s assume you have twelve sets of dinner plates, bread plates, salad plates, cup saucers, and fruit bowls. This gives you a total of 60 pieces of china to pack.

To start you need to get all the dinner plates together and enough 5/16” bubble wrap to make 11 sheets that are 12” by 12”. Start with a plate, lay a piece of bubble wrap on top of it, add another plate, another piece of bubble wrap. Continue this process until you have all 12 plates stacked upon each other with bubble wrap in between them. Make sure none of the plates will be able to touch each other. If they touch they will get chipped or broken during the shipping process.

But wait, you’re not done with those dinner plates yet! Now you need to wrap two layers of ½” bubble wrap around the entire stack. This will take approximately six feet of bubble wrap. Wrap the stack with a one foot wide strip of bubble wrap and secure the ends. Then use a second strip of bubble wrap and place it perpendicular to the first, wrapping the stack of plates again to cover all exposed edges.

Repeat the same process with the bread and salad plates, saucers, and fruit bowls.

Now that all the plates, bowls, and saucers are bubble wrapped, it is time to box them. Put the items into a box which will hold all the items. Fill all the empty spaces around these items with packing peanuts to eliminate the possibility of movement. Next, you need to put this box into another larger box with at least two inches of padding on all six sides. Let’s assume you packed everything into a 14” x 14” x 14” box. Now you need a box with dimensions of 18” x 18” x 18”. The space between the two boxes will be filled with packing peanuts. We recommend that the outer box be a double walled box. These boxes are stronger and more durable in the shipping process.

Congratulations! You have completed the packing process for the plates, saucers and bowls. Here is a list of the materials needed to accomplish this task:

1. 55 feet 5/16” bubble wrap
2. 50 feet ½” bubble wrap
3. 4 cubic feet of packing peanuts
4. Box 14” x 14” x 14”
5. Double walled Box 18” x 18” x 18”
6. 2 – 3 hours packing time

Packing china is very material and time intensive. You have much better things to do! So why not leave it up to the pros at The Shipping Place? Just bring your china to our store at 600 Violet Avenue Hyde Park, NY and relax while we take care of the work and get your package safely on its way