How self storage can help you through the seasons
Unless you’re fortunate enough to have a house with ample storage space (the kind with peacocks strolling around outside), you’re likely to encounter that maddening sensation of having far too much stuff cluttering up your life and making it difficult to find anything. This can be quite overwhelming and you may find yourself fruitlessly moving things around your home time after time, trying to find some combination of storage that doesn’t involve anything being left on the floor or the dining room table.
Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to afford to build an extension, or indeed have access to outdoor storage space such as garages and sheds. For us poor souls, each season can bring new and unpleasant storage challenges as we battle clutter, from undertaking frankly terrifying forays up the rickety ladder into the loft to retrieve Christmas decorations, to being driven half-crazed by tripping over the bike in the hallway yet again.
Fortunately, seasonal self storage offers a pathway to organised serenity at any time of the year. If you’re canny with it, you can
use your storage space to rotate your belongings throughout the year, leaving your home clutter-free and fit for purpose all year round.
Winter Storage
Winter is a busy season for most of us. The weather turns from chilly to downright nippy (to use official British weather terminology) and winter coats and jumpers are a must, meaning you may need to clear out your wardrobe to make room for them. If you ride a bike normally, you probably won’t do so as much in winter and will need proper
bike storage to prevent arguments with your spouse or cohabitee about where the blasted thing should be kept for the next three months or so.
Christmas is lots of fun but brings its own set of challenges. Firstly, there is that aforementioned terrifying trip into the loft to retrieve the tree and decorations from last year; then there is the need to find somewhere to hide presents where the recipients won’t find them. In the midst of all of this, friends and family have a tendency to visit (as if your house were not already in sufficient chaos) and any ‘spare room’ you might have has to be transformed into a ‘guest room’, which means having to find somewhere else for all the presents to go. After the event is all over, the whole house needs reorganising to store the now-opened gifts, and there has to be yet another death-defying trip up the loft ladder to return the decorations until next year.
It is perhaps unsurprising that many of our customers turn to self storage during winter to avoid all that nonsense. You can opt for just a small self storage unit which you can use for
Christmas tree storage (to avoid the scary loft ladder), or to keep extra furniture, clothing or belongings that you won’t need again until the warmer months. You can also keep your spare room free for people to actually sleep in by using self storage to keep your presents or spare-room-junk until you are mercifully free of guests once more.
Spring Storage
Once spring arrives, all the things you needed during winter suddenly become superfluous.
Clothes storage becomes an issue like never before. Even if it’s freezing cold, you won’t wear thick jumpers and bulky coats again until next winter (because you’re British and we cleave to the idea that spring is warm even when it’s really not). Those bulky items take up space in your wardrobe, making it difficult for you to find clothes you want to wear or crushing them and creating mountains of unnecessary ironing. You may also have other winter detritus lying around like sledges, skis or even winter tyres for your car.
All of these things can go safely into self storage where they will be kept clean, safe and dry until you next need them. This will make it easier for you to
spring clean and feel generally better about your home because you will have more space and fewer things to fall over.
Summer Storage
Summer is traditionally the time of year when most people choose to move house, usually to take advantage of the quieter months at work or the school holidays. If you plan to move, you can use self storage as a means of
storing most of your furniture until you have moved in and decorated your new home. This will also give you time to properly plan what furniture will go where in your new home, and which items can be sold or gifted to charity if they won’t fit properly.
Summer is also a time when students come traipsing home from university, usually bringing a year’s worth of washing and the entire contents of their student accommodation. Most student accommodation does not continue over the summer holidays and any bedding, furniture and furnishings will now need to find a place in your home once more. However, if you happen to have taken advantage of your offspring’s absence and filled their room with stuff that wouldn’t fit elsewhere, you may now have insufficient space for their belongings to fit. Again, self storage can be a real help, allowing you to safely store your student’s belongings or your own until they return to university in the autumn.
Autumn Storage
Once the children have gone back to school or university and the weather has turned chilly once more, your summer belongings seem to mock your loss of carefree sunny days and also take up an inordinate amount of space. Plus, you definitely need to wear a jumper, and wardrobe space is again at a premium.
So it is again time to rotate your belongings in and out of storage. Put away summer clothes; store your children’s outdoor toys to give your grass half a chance of surviving until spring.
Garden furniture storage is also a must, especially if you don’t have the luxury of a shed, to prevent that horrible green stuff from growing on your chairs - garden tools can also be stored to prevent rust developing.
Whatever the time of year,
seasonal storage is a very good way to stay organised and keep your home functional and clutter-free, at least until you can afford the house with the peacocks.
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