A storage space can quickly become messy and chaotic if not properly organized and planned out. Between navigating through a cramped room, protecting your belongings from bugs that could infect furniture and clothing, and keeping all of your items in order, packing a storage unit can take a lot of hard work. If you’re planning to use self storage units in the near future, here are a few expert tips to keep in mind.
Plan Ahead
One of the best ways to prevent clutter within a storage unit is to plan your layout ahead of time. The process can be as simple as drawing out the basic shape of your space and labeling where each item should be placed. When deciding on where to put your largest items in the unit, be sure to set couches, wardrobes, and other big pieces of furniture towards the front. While it may not seem concerning right now, you’ll have to move everything in the way of those objects if you want to retrieve them later on. Instead of placing large items towards the back, try putting them along the walls of a storage space, with as few belongings blocking them as possible. You should also plan to leave an aisle wide enough for you to walk through all the way around the area.
Organize by Usefulness
While many people tend to organize by category, it’s easier to organize your unit based on usefulness. Putting together all of your shirts in one place, jewelry in another spot, and home decor in a different pile makes it harder to rummage through your items to get to what you need. Instead, try to sort your belongings from front to back based on how often you use them or how often you might need to retrieve items from storage. This is especially true for things that are heavy or hard to carry in and out of the unit.
Protect and Disassemble Furniture
Regardless of whether or not you have a climate controlled storage space, it’s always a good idea to protect all of your valuable belongings with waterproof and insect-proof coverings. Mold and rot can be a huge problem in units, and most rot-related problems can be avoided by using a simple plastic covering on items such as mattresses, clothes, and blankets.
It’s also a good idea to disassemble most pieces of your furniture, even if only partially. You can save a lot of space this way, and it makes the moving process easier when transporting large furniture to and from a unit in smaller pieces. While it might seem daunting to take your furniture apart and put it back together, you can take pictures of each step of the dissembling process and tape a ziplock bag of the photos to each of the furniture parts. Check out this article for additional tips on furniture storage.
Thinking through how to organize your storage unit beforehand, can save a lot of headaches down the road. Simple planning can make your storage space work better for you!