If you’ve ever built a bookshelf from IKEA—or ordered a desk from Wayfair or Amazon—there’s one sneaky part about the assembly instructions that you may have missed: Manufacturers often recommend only assembling the furniture once.
A large percentage of today’s ready-to-assemble furniture simply isn’t built for being moved, let alone multiple rounds of disassembly and reassembly. That’s why it’s important to have some priorities and expectations set before moving day.
Not All Furniture Is Built the Same
Solid wood furniture and particle board furniture may look pretty similar when you’re looking at them from across the room, but they’re built very differently. With solid wood, the design is typically going to hold up against years of use, including some moves. Particle board furniture, on the other hand, is engineered to be affordable—and lightweight.
Something that works just fine under normal household use won’t always be able to withstand a move where you need to take apart the pieces and put them back together again. The materials can weaken over time, and you may not be left with the same quality that you had when it was brand-new. This doesn’t necessarily make particle board furniture “bad,” but it is worth knowing its limitations.
Why Particle Board Breaks More Easily
Particle board is made by compressing wood fibers with adhesives to create large panels, and to hold the various pieces together in your build, you’ve likely got small fasteners. That hardware works to grip the compressed material. It’s about convenience, and the products themselves are a great value and are perfect for lots of homes.
The catch, though, is that every time the actual screws are removed and reinstalled, those connection points can become weaker. The holes can get bigger, and then the screws may not tighten as well. Your joints can also lose their strength. That’s why damage sometimes occurs during a move—even when the furniture has been handled carefully.
Movers Can’t Change How Furniture Was Built
One of the hardest conversations on moving day happens when a piece of furniture begins to fail during disassembly, and ready-to-assemble furniture made from particle board, or something similar, tend to be some of the most common items to have issues with during relocation. The thing to remember is that it’s not usually the moving process that’s a problem, but just the nature of how the furniture was built.
Professional movers will always work to handle every piece of furniture carefully, but they can’t magically fix structural strength that’s already long gone. That’s why communicating about older, ready-to-assemble furniture ahead of time is so helpful. It allows everyone to plan and have a realistic idea of how the day will go.
Should You Move It or Replace It?
Ideally, moving is a time to take a close look at your furniture, as well as all of your other belongings. People tend to use a move as a motivator to purge their inventory and get a fresh start. Sometimes that means making upgrades.
Maybe it’s time to re-examine that older particle board furniture. Some furniture isn’t exactly designed to be moved more than once, so if you already have shelves that wobble, loose hardware, or a part that’s been repaired a few times, it might be worth asking whether it’s worth moving at all. For some inexpensive items, replacement after the move can actually be more practical than paying to transport furniture that’s already approaching the end of its lifespan. Every situation is different, but it’s worth considering before moving day.
At Colt Moving, the goal is to help customers avoid moving-day surprises, so knowing which pieces are solid wood, which are ready-to-assemble, and which may require extra care will always help us streamline the process. Not every piece of furniture is built to last forever, but we’ll be sure to get it to your new place as safely as possible!