Storage facilities are an indispensable tool for many people, providing households a means to temporarily store items that can’t yet fit into their homes. Careful consideration can help optimise your use of your self-storage unit.
Whether you and your family are moving to a different location or want to make room in your home, you may have reasons why you should get a unit in a storage facility. Likely, you will have a lot of items that you’d like to store away there, especially when you’ve moved to a smaller home or are in the process of renovating your home.
Today, storage facilities can be found in Sydney and other major cities across Australia. The right selections and choices can make the process of putting away household items in a storage facility easy.
Know What can go in
One thing to remember about storage facilities is that not everything can go in. Restrictions exist for safety and maintenance purposes. Things that can be placed within are usually dry items to reduce the likelihood of humidity causing damage within the items in the unit.
Besides perishables and live animals and plants, a host of items should not be placed in self-storage. Valuables and important documents, for one, are something that’s best left stored elsewhere. Ordinarily, they would need to be stored away somewhere far more secure (such as a safety deposit box in a bank), though they can also be stored at home.
Wet or scented items are also typically restricted for quality assurance purposes. Items with strong scents may attract rodents, insects, and other vermin. Wet items, meanwhile, would increase the internal humidity of the self-storage unit and cause damage.
Selecting and Preparing
Items usually cannot just be placed into a storage unit. They have to be properly measured and covered to reduce the likelihood of damage caused by the accumulation of dust and kept in boxes to keep them orderly and tidy. To maximise the volume of items to be stored in a unit, the items stored must be properly fitted into the storage space.
Before selecting the storage unit, you must first determine exactly what you’ll be placing within it. Furniture items would naturally require larger storage units, whereas everyday objects and tools may need smaller ones. Measure everything you intend to store not only to ensure that they would fit in your unit but also that they may be fitted into position with relative ease.
Carefully catalogue each item destined for storage to have a clear idea of how much you have in storage at any given time. This inventory will also help you sort out which of your items in storage you would need more, which should reflect on their arrangement in the unit.
Storage Duration
The items typically placed in storage temporarily are usually those that you would rather not sell or get rid of. If you find yourself storing items for a prolonged period that you probably don’t intend on using even when you find the space for them, it might be time to start selling them. There will come a time when you would eventually need to get your items.
Use your catalogue to identify which of your stored items you would need and which ones you would eventually need to dispatch.
Placement matters. Arrange your items according to how you would expect them to be used. Items meant for long-term storage such as heavy furniture can stay further back, whereas items that are currently or regularly used should be placed as close as possible to the front of the storage area for easy access.
