Unpacking and Breaking in MC

[Judy Wilson]

MC comes with a lot--and I mean, a lot!--of packaging, in order to keep the acrylic case from breaking beneath the weight of the books. This makes it pretty difficult to unpack.

I have become an expert at packing and unpacking MC. Since starting with the team, my arm strength has significantly increased, too!

I've found that the best thing to do is to:

1. open the main box and take out the four cardboard corners.

2. open the interior box, and take out the kitchen manual and cardboard boards.

3. without taking the interior box out, tip the whole box on it's side.

4. grab ahold of the plastic case and pull.

Chris Long, one of our readers, sent me a link about how to break the books themselves:

If you ever want to know how to repackage the book (I'm not sure why anyone who is not me or someone who is writing a review of MC would ever do this, maybe if you were moving...) let me know. I have that technique down as well.

[Anonymous Modernist 2107]

Hello from Australia! I have just unpacked my MC set and wanted to thank the team for such incredibly good packaging. That alone was quite an engineering feat, and I've barely started looking through the magnificent books!

[Anonymous Modernist 399]

While I'm no engineer unpacking was quite involved but certainly appreciated. For some reason I did keep all the packaging materials, and they have come in handy already, we had been planning on moving but the time frame was unsure. Then it happened in the course of three weeks, found a place, packed and moved, and MC was safely moved without incident. Still renting so those packing materials will come in handy in year or two once again, transporting MC around without them could be a little stressful and hazardous otherwise.

[Cheviot]

I just unpacked mine today. Bravo on the packing job! Its a shame it's not quite as pretty as the european packaging, but the box is just going into storage anyway.

[Anonymous Modernist 4644]

Judy said:

If you ever want to know how to repackage the book (I'm not sure why anyone who is not me or someone who is writing a review of MC would ever do this, maybe if you were moving...) let me know. I have that technique down as well.

Judy, I do need to repackage my copy, let's just say; I don't want to leave home without it. Could you elaborate please?

Thanks,

Jens

[Judy Wilson]

Ah, I have been away for the holidays, so hopefully this comes in time for you.

There are a couple of different things that you can do. The best is to never take the inner cardboard box out at all.

If you have done that, however, I find that there's two ways to easily get it back in without discarding the cardboard corners all together. The first is to put the inner cardboard box (taped up) inside the the outer box without the corners in the bottom (yet). Then put the top corners in, and tape it up. Then flip the box upside down, open up the bottom, stick in the corners and tape it back up. You could also turn the (again, taped up) inner box upside down, stick the corners on the box, and fit the outer box over it. then turn it upside down and stick the top corners on.

As for the inner box, first put in the large cardboard piece. This is actually kind of hard to get out of the box at all, so it might already be in there. Then, and I think that this is the hardest part, put the set in the box so that either the front cover of vol. 5 or back cover of vol. 1 faces up (Note: if, however, you are not shipping it and just taking it in the car, I think it's perfectly fine to set it in the box the other way, so that the opening of the plastic case faces up. You will not be able to use all of the packaging material though, which is why I don't like to ship it that way). Then put in the four rectangular pieces of cardboard around the sides of the case. Next, put the kitchen manual (in it's box) on top. Put the strips of cardboard around it and put the large piece of cardboard on top. Tape it up and proceed to the above paragraph.

Hope that helps!