When it's time to pack your things and move, one room's items present a few more challenges than others: the kitchen. Filled with fragile items, electronics, and strangely shaped utensils, your kitchen can become a packing nightmare – unless you follow these tips.

Wrap glassware and china individually. Yes, it will take more time, but you'll be more sure the items arrive in one piece. Don't use thin tissue paper, either. Wrap each item in thick moving paper or newspaper, and then secure the wrap with a piece of masking tape.

Rubber band your utensils. Stack "like" utensils, such as all of your spoons, together. Then, secure the stacks with rubber bands placed around the handles. Now you don't have hundreds of individual utensils to pack, but rather a few bundles of utensils.

Remove crumbs with a vacuum. If you leave crumbs in appliances, like your toaster and microwave, you may unpack them to find that the crumbs have attracted rodents, insects, and other pests. An easy way to remove crumbs is to use the wand attachment on your vacuum and suck up the crumbs.

Let appliances dry first. If you wipe or wash appliances like refrigerators or microwaves out before packing them (and you should), make sure you let them dry out completely before closing them or putting them in a box. This will help prevent any molding during transport and storage.

Label your boxes very specifically. When you arrive in your new home, there will be things you need immediately (like basic utensils) and things you might not want to bother to unpack for weeks. If your boxes are labeled very specifically, you won't have to unpack three boxes to try and find what you need.

Pad items with crumbled up paper. A lot of oddly shaped kitchen items are hard to stack and arrange neatly in boxes. If you just pile them in, they might scratch and scrape each other. Instead of trying to pack as many items as possible in a box, put just a few oddly shaped items in each box and place plenty of crumbled up paper between them.

Wind cords up. To prevent cords from becoming tangled while your items are in boxes, wind them up into a little circle, and secure them with either twist ties or zip ties.

With the tips above, packing the items in your kitchen should be simple and successful. Contact residential movers in your area to learn more.