A Picture Guide to Packing Pots and Pans

A mini steamroller?

Well, yeah… but we kind of had something different in mind.

Pots and pans, we think, would be a lot easier to pack if they didn’t have any handles.

“So, what, we should saw off the handles?”, you might ask.

Tempting, but no. Those handles are there to stay. Unfortunately, they make the pots and pans we’re trying to pack look a lot like this:

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but it doesn’t make things easy when we’re trying to pack a dense, stable carton. So instead we’re going to take a couple of those dishtowels and put them in the largest pot. Follow along!

We’ll do the same for the next pot, and for any other pots we pack – not only to keep them from scratching each other, but to keep those handles more or less level.

NOTE: We’d also want to use a bit of packing paper between the pots to better protect all that metal, but for visual purposes, we left it out.

We can finish off our stack of pots by wrapping and placing (upside down) the lid to the smallest pot (if there is one) on top.

And what we’re left with is a short stack of pots that can be wrapped up into a sturdy little bundle that is level on top, allowing for a solid second layer of pots or pans (or whatever else you use to fill up your carton).

And hey, it looks pretty good too. (Besides the customer’s pot, but we can’t always help that.)

And one last tip: just be sure to line your customer’s pots and pans with packing paper before and after placing those dishtowels in there!