Packing my mattress and box spring

Hi there,

I was trying to figure out how I am going to pack my mattress and box spring for shipping overseas. I looked around this part of the forums but didn't see it addressed. I can easily get a mattress bag from Uhaul but I just don't know if it will be sturdy enough, I would hate for the mattress to get ripped... hopefully the box spring won't be crushed either... I can't seem to find a box for mattress and box spring...

Can someone who has done it tell me what they did and how well it worked and any other suggestions would be fab!

I absolutely hate the bed frames I have seen in the UK the 2 sets of slats with a supporting post down the middle made of wood with an itty bitty 1x1x6 post in the middle of that beam for support seems amazingly *unsturdy (edited for vulgar language) compared to a hollywood frame =(  We broke the bed last time I was there... had to go to 3 hardware stores before finding lumber adequate to fix it.

Flat-pack bed frames with slats aren't the only sort of beds available in the UK....

We have a king-sized (US queen) pillowtop with a divan base - a box spring with drawers in the bottom (extra storage FTW!).  It's a great bed and the whole setup only cost around £400.

it sounds great and I thought about that option, getting a divan but I like the idea of how easy it would be to move my bed around and to be honest LOL I LOVE my bed =)

One quick question: have you made sure that your bed will fit into your UK house? I know that in general US beds are bigger than UK ones (i.e. a UK King is about the same size as a US Queen) and so before you pay to have it shipped, I would just check that it will be small enough to fit through the doors/up the stairs/in the bedroom of the UK house you will be living in when you arrive.

I'm sure it wouldn't be good if you'd gone to the trouble of finding a box, paying to ship it and then waiting for it to arrive, only to find that you can't get it through the door when it does  !

yup, measured, sorted and it's gonna work =) I wasn't even thinking about that but DF said we should check so I measured, then he measured. he was the one urging me to move it anyhow, we will move his double to the spare room so it all works out well because we didn't have a bed for that room as it is currently the junk room (OH BOY will THAT be sorted when I get over there LOL)

funniest thing is, originally I was going to get rid of everything and just take what ever I could fit on the plane but I have this old steamer trunk that he loves and I said I was just going to give it back to my parents from whence it came... he said I had to bring it! and I should just take it on the plane with me (no freakin way would they even check it I imagine) heheh, and that is what prompted us to look into the moving of the stuff. My grandparents used it when they went on ocean liners to travel around the world hehe

You're aware that you won't be able to buy linens that fit properly over here, right? Although a UK king is 'like' a US queen, it's not the same. There doesn't appear to be any true overlap in sizes/shapes - everything is a bit different. As another poster said, don't underestimate how small some of the rooms here can be, too.

Personally, I'd recommend just buying a new set here - the shipping costs are exorbitant and the hassle of having to always buy things from the US seems like it'd almost certainly offset the price of just buying something new here. I understand about loving a bed set, though (I sold my 22" deep pillow-top luxury mattresses to come over here =/).

Aww, if you can afford to ship it and you've got room for it, bring it! I miss my bed  :\\\'( :\\\'(, but my parents love it, haha! 
Movers have ways of boxing the mattresses up with weird fold up boxes. How are you shipping your stuff with movers or u-pack-we ship? If its movers, they'll do it for you.  If not, maybe you can purchase some materials from a local moving company?

Are you shipping in a container or through some kind of mail/shipping service?  When DH and I shipped our mattresses via the container, the moving guys wrapped them together in some kind of weird black thick trash bag material that went on like Saran Wrap.  Same process with our couch.  The mattresses arrived at our front door safe and sound.

One note: our US Queen boxspring did not fit up our stairs or through any windows, which forced us to disassemble it (ripped that thin fabric off the bottom and removed the three supporting 1x1s so it could be curved to go up our twisty (two flights!) stairs.  Despite all the drama that that process entailed, I am SO happy that we have our bed with us.  We shipped a bunch of linens, too, so no biggie there.  We had to do our shipping before we knew where we were living, so we didn't bother to worry about making things fit.  It would all work out somehow.

We are going through Upakweship. It was the bes price and whether it gets to where I am going in 3 months or 5 or whatever it doesn't matter.

I don't want to buy a new bed, I don't want a Divan at all, and I will be damned if I am gonna spend the rest of my life easing into bed, not bumping it and being careful not to be too bouncy bouncy when having fun heh

It's worth the price for me to send it, I don't mind buying sheets over here and having them sent. I will probably get several sets before I leave.

I am just going to bag them, they wrap and shrink wrap the whole lot when I drop it off at the warehouse. I am not gonna stress about it, might just double bag the mattress tho

THanks for everyones advice hehe I have just hit the "Ugh, I just want this over with and to be with my DF and to hell with the details" phase heh

I don't want a Divan at all, and I will be damned if I am gonna spend the rest of my life easing into bed, not bumping it and being careful not to be too bouncy bouncy when having fun heh

Just curious as to why you think having a divan bed means treating it with kid gloves?  I can guarantee that ours functions exactly the same as my US box springs and mattress that I left behind..."fun time" and all.     In fact, I worry MUCH less about noise and breakage in our current bed than when we're in one with a headboard and frame!!

nah hehe not worried about the sturdieness just that if I wanted to move it, it would be a pain, I store stuff under my bed in plastic bins so storage is something I already got...

I was meaning the slated beds sturdiness, I am sure if you don't have side by side slat bed it's prolly way sturdy heh I dunno.

Our divan is actually easier to move than my US box spring and mattress set - because the divan splits into two halves, like a US king-sized box spring!  My US queen-sized box spring was all one piece and heavy!