Storage Tips
Whether you’ve used Self Storage
before or this is your first time leasing a rental space, storage tips are a
helpful way to ensure your experience is a success. From household furniture
and outdoor equipment to commercial inventory and office supplies, find the
information you need to store your items right. Barnet Self Storage provides
this comprehensive list to all of our renters. Browse through an array of
topics to find the storage, moving and packing advice you need. Still can’t
find what you’re looking for? Contact Barnet Self Storage manager for
additional assistance.
Reduce Clutter
Renting a Self Storage unit can be a great way to reduce clutter and free up needed space at the home or office. A storage unit is a smart place to keep a few boxes, old appliances, memorabilia, heirlooms and old toys.
Security
Self Storage facilities provide security features not normally found on homes. In addition to a lock, Self Storage facilities are often protected by a security fence; surveillance cameras; a gated entry; limited entry after hours; exterior lighting and possibly security guards or on-site management. You may choose to purchase an in-home security system for your home. While this may protect the items stored in your home, will it protect items left in your yard? What about that backyard storage shed? Self Storage units give you the benefits of both extra storage space and added security.
Safety
Some items pose potential hazards at home and need to be placed in a secure area to ensure the safety of your family. You may be handy around the house and enjoy renovation projects, but between jobs, a Self Storage unit can keep those power tools, ladders, saws and drills away from curious children and, thereby, reduce the risk of possible accidents around the house.
Space
Homes often do not have the storage space to hold large items. For instance, if you have ski boats, canoes or vintage cars, you may not have room for them in your garage or driveway. A Self Storage unit could give you a place to store such items that provides protection from the weather and some added security. If your garage has slowly filled with things like your exercise equipment and camping supplies and you want to reclaim it for your car, a Self Storage unit may be a perfect solution.
De-cluttering: Store or Keep?
As you look around your house, you realize that you have accumulated more than will fit into the square footage available in your home. It may be that you cannot abide junk and regularly rid your home of worn out items and things no one wants anymore. Still, you see that too many things are cluttering your home and hiding its style and pizzazz. You decide to rent a Self Storage unit. It will allow you to rotate your treasures in and out of your house at the whim of your inner design guru. Now comes the hard part. What should stay and what should be tucked away in your Self Storage unit?
Keepers
Storage-Bound
Reduce Clutter
Renting a Self Storage unit can be a great way to reduce clutter and free up needed space at the home or office. A storage unit is a smart place to keep a few boxes, old appliances, memorabilia, heirlooms and old toys.
Security
Self Storage facilities provide security features not normally found on homes. In addition to a lock, Self Storage facilities are often protected by a security fence; surveillance cameras; a gated entry; limited entry after hours; exterior lighting and possibly security guards or on-site management. You may choose to purchase an in-home security system for your home. While this may protect the items stored in your home, will it protect items left in your yard? What about that backyard storage shed? Self Storage units give you the benefits of both extra storage space and added security.
Safety
Some items pose potential hazards at home and need to be placed in a secure area to ensure the safety of your family. You may be handy around the house and enjoy renovation projects, but between jobs, a Self Storage unit can keep those power tools, ladders, saws and drills away from curious children and, thereby, reduce the risk of possible accidents around the house.
Space
Homes often do not have the storage space to hold large items. For instance, if you have ski boats, canoes or vintage cars, you may not have room for them in your garage or driveway. A Self Storage unit could give you a place to store such items that provides protection from the weather and some added security. If your garage has slowly filled with things like your exercise equipment and camping supplies and you want to reclaim it for your car, a Self Storage unit may be a perfect solution.
De-cluttering: Store or Keep?
As you look around your house, you realize that you have accumulated more than will fit into the square footage available in your home. It may be that you cannot abide junk and regularly rid your home of worn out items and things no one wants anymore. Still, you see that too many things are cluttering your home and hiding its style and pizzazz. You decide to rent a Self Storage unit. It will allow you to rotate your treasures in and out of your house at the whim of your inner design guru. Now comes the hard part. What should stay and what should be tucked away in your Self Storage unit?
Keepers
- Hold onto clothes that are in season and that you wear regularly.
- Keep at home practical items in regular use like silverware, towels, bedding and soap dishes.
- Retain often-used furniture.
- Keep photos and wall hangings that add a spark to the decor.
- Hold onto board games and enough toys to fill your child’s toy box.
- Keep enough of your college student’s personal objects to make them feel at home when they visit.
- File current bills and private documents like social security cards and bank account information at home.
- Show off collectors’ items in a display cabinet.
- Make room for sporting gear that someone in the house uses every few days (basketballs, yoga mats, bikes and more).
- Carve a niche for that emergency household tool kit.
Storage-Bound
- Store out-of-season clothing and footwear.
- Box up extra items that clutter your cupboards like excess towels, the good silver used only on holidays and extra blankets needed only in winter
- Store the rocker that only grandma sits in when she visits every six months or the footstool that no one uses but everyone trips over.
- Store photos and wall hangings that make the room look too busy or just don’t fit your current design scheme.
- Pack away extra toys that you have no room for. Rotate them in and out every few weeks so that your child can enjoy all of them. Involve your child in the decisions.
- Put away your college student’s bags, balls and other belongings that spill out of his closets into other rooms or that make his room uncomfortable for guests.
- Stash tax documents and other papers that may be needed but are seldom reviewed.
- Store collectors’ items that take up too much room and don’t look good on display. If you have several collections or many items, you may want to rotate them.
- Pack up out-of-season sporting gear.
- Bundle garden tools together in the off-season and stick them in a garbage bin in your self storage unit.
- Ultimately, use your discretion to decide what stays and what goes. Label your stored goods well. If you are keeping them, you should rotate what you can into daily use every so often.
Holiday Decorations
The presents are unwrapped, the boxes are emptied of their contents, and tissue paper is strewn about the room. Time to clean up from all the holiday merriment; but don’t be too hasty to throw out the tissue paper and empty boxes – recycle them. This article will give you some “ah ha” ideas for storing holiday decorations, and Self Storage is a convenient place to holiday items when the season is over.
Ornaments
- Run used gift-wrap and tissue paper through a paper shredder and use the fluffy strips as filler.
- Keep fragile ornaments at the top of a box.
- Egg cartons are perfect for tiny ornaments.
- Have a partitioned cardboard wine box? Use it to store tissue-wrapped ornaments. Several ornaments can be stacked on top of each other in each slot.
- Reuse a shirt box or shoebox to store ornament hangers. Fill it with hooks, rolls of small ribbon, cording, scissors, twist ties and craft wire – everything you’d need to replace the inevitable lost hanger.
- Store food-based decorations (like the cinnamon and applesauce ornaments your kids bring home from school) in sandwich bags to protect them from humidity, and then place the bags in an empty cookie tin to keep rodents out.
- Store bulky garlands in large plastic storage boxes. You can push a lot into a big box, since there’s nothing to break, and the garlands can be fluffed out.
- Mark the center of a long swag with a colored twist tie before you remove it so you won’t have to measure it again next year.
- Label segments of garland with a pen and masking tape as you take it down so you’ll always know which piece to hang in the entryway and which is just the right size for the mantel.
- Instead of coiling your lights in a bundle that somehow turns into a big tangled ball, wrap them around empty wrapping paper tubes and tape the ends of the string to the tube.
- Put extra bulbs and fuses in a sandwich bag and place inside the tube.
