Smart Disassembly

Are you getting ready to move or redecorate and you need to take apart that large IKEA (or other “assembled at home”) piece of furniture? So many screws and bolts and nuts and dowels and clips! To keep from losing any of the hardware (and to keep the pieces organized), press them to the sticky side of a wide piece of tape, such as duct tape or thick masking tape. It’s a good idea to stick the parts on the tape in the same order that you remove them. As you go, stick narrow strips of paper onto the tape width-wise to separate groups of hardware by their location in the furniture, and write on these strips to ID each section with a brief description of where the pieces came from. When you reassemble the furniture, you’ll easily work your way across the tape to find the parts you need.