There comes a time when you realize you have too much stuff hanging around.
That’s when it becomes imperative to find adequate storage solutions. And one of the benefits of steel buildings is that they make excellent storage spaces.
Unfortunately, storage mistakes of every kind are easy to make. It’s not enough to throw your excess “stuff” into a storage space and hope for the best. You can make your life much easier by developing a good strategy for storage.
Storage Mistakes to Avoid
It’s easy to make mistakes when storing your belongings for an extended time. After all, how hard can it be? All you have to do is pile everything up in your storeroom, right?
But there’s a little more to it than that. Read on to learn about six common storage mistakes you’ll want to avoid.
1. Not Getting a Storage Space of the Right Size
This is one of the most common mistakes. Finding the right size for your storeroom is crucial, especially when using steel buildings.
Space in buildings can be hard to judge, and it can be easy to get a space with too much or too little space for your storage requirements. So it’s important to do your homework beforehand, and make sure you choose a storage space with the right dimensions for what you need.
2. Not Packing the Right Way
Boxes and packaging materials are your friends.
Use them wisely, and get a variety of differently sized boxes, depending on the size of items you wish to store. Invest in packing materials, such as wrapping paper, packing peanuts, bubble wrap to ensure the safety of your items.
3. Forgetting to Label Properly
Labeling your boxes will make your life much easier when you want to find certain items, or when you end up unpacking your items later on.
Use colored stickers to keep certain items together—for instance, yellow stickers for books, blue stickers for silverware, etc. Consider labeling boxes with numbers, too, and compiling a list of the contents of each numbered box, so you can easily find what you need.
4. Not Leaving an Access Space
It all comes down to organization.
And that means leaving aisles and access spaces amidst your boxes, so you can easily reach what you want. Otherwise you’ll be sweating it out in a hot storeroom, struggling to move boxes so you can find that one thing you really need. Which, of course, will be buried at the very back.
5. Not Formulating a Plan
This is related to the above point.
Leaving an open pathway is great, but it’s also important to stack your boxes and items in an organized way. So, if you think you’ll be needing certain items sooner than others, place them in the front, where they can be reached more easily.
6. Storing Food Items
Come on. This is a definite no-no in anyone’s book.
Still, it happens, even though it shouldn’t. Do not store food, or other perishable material, in your storage space. It will mean nasty smells, vermin, roaches, and other creepy-crawlies that you don’t want hanging around your stuff.
There are just some things that shouldn’t be kept in a storage unit.
Avoid These Mistakes When Using Steel Buildings for Storage
These are easy storage mistakes to make, but the good news is they’re very easy to avoid. By storing your stuff the right way, you save yourself a real headache down the line and ensure that your property is safe and secure.
Global Steel Buildings is the go-to source for pre-engineered steel buildings for your self-storage needs. Please contact us today to see how we can help!