Packing Materials and Self-Storage

Mention packing materials when talking about self-storage, and people's minds immediately jump to packing boxes. There are certainly a wide variety of boxes to choose from when it comes to packing materials. At Access Self Storage alone, we offer as many as 11 varieties of cardboard packing boxes for your self-storage needs. But "packing materials" doesn't just mean boxes.

There are a variety of packing materials available at Access that will make your self-storage much easier. For irregularly shaped items, you could go for storage bags instead of boxes, to keep your self-storage protected, and avoid boxes full of wasted space. Plastic tubs are available for a bit of added protection, for anything just a bit more breakable or valuable in self-storage. Mattress and lounge covers are also on offer, to keep away the dust and to protect them during the move into self-storage. Bubble wrap is obviously a very important packing material in self-storage, along with packing paper (or butcher's paper) and tissue paper. Vacuum space saver bags are fantastic when space saving is one of your top priorities for self-storage - they'll save you about 75% more space. Packing tape and packing knives are an essential component to both packing up your things into self-storage, and coming back to retrieve them. And never forget the marking pen, so you can carefully label all your boxes in self-storage.

Obviously you won't want to use everything listed here for your self-storage, but there are certainly some useful options available, other than just the packing boxes, which you might want to consider before using self-storage.

Keeping Storage Rental Safe in the Long Term

If you're planning to use storage rental in the long term, there a couple of things you should consider to keep your storage items safe and well maintained.

The first and most obvious step is to pack them well. If you're storing smaller objects, wrap everything carefully and keep them in boxes. Pack boxes with packing material or bubble wrap, so if anything falls or is moved during the storage rental, your things will still be safe.

It's also a good idea to give the storage unit a clean out once in a while during your storage rental. It may seem silly to be dusting out your storage unit, when the furniture in it is just going to stay in storage rental, but it will help to keep the furniture in good condition.

Keep in mind that certain items may not survive well in a storage rental environment, especially in the long term. Computers shouldn't really be stored for longer than six months. Clothes, if they haven't been packed carefully in a clothes box, may come out of storage rental a little worse for wear.

As long as you check on your things fairly frequently, long-term storage rental should work out fine. At Access Self Storage, our storage units are well maintained and very clean. Just remember to follow these few steps, and to check up on your storage unit every once in a while, and your long-term storage rental should definitely work out successfully.

Emptying Your Storage Unit Back Into the House

If you've used a storage unit to house things temporarily while you moved houses, there are a few helpful tips to make moving it all into your new home much easier.

Planning ahead is key. When you pack up your storage unit, write out a plan. Note where everything belongs, what you've packed first, which room each box has come from. Be thoughtful about your labelling - make it very clear what each box contains, and where it should go when you unpack again. Your storage unit should be full of boxes with very detailed labels, and you should keep a plan of your storage unit, to give a basic idea of where everything is inside the storage unit.

When you unpack the storage unit, do it in an organised fashion. Keep boxes from the same rooms together, and when you unload them into the house, put them straight in those rooms. Refer back to your plan, so you know which boxes should be unpacked first. You could keep some of the unnecessary boxes in the storage unit while you unpack the essentials, which will also help to keep the house less cluttered.

Above all, make sure you've set a deadline for completely emptying the storage unit. Otherwise, unpacking could carry on indefinitely while you leave various boxes in your storage unit while you deal with other things. Setting a deadline will help to ensure the unpacking of your storage unit will eventually get done in good time.

Unpacking Your Storage Unit Over the Long Term

When your need for a storage unit comes to an end, the obvious thing to do is empty out your storage unit in one fell swoop, and return it all to your house. Right?

In some cases, it might actually be easier to empty your storage unit much more slowly. If you've chosen to get storage rental to help make moving a lot easier, then unpacking your storage unit gradually is only going to help this process even more. Rather than getting everything out of the storage unit and filling your new house up with boxes, you could take your time, and unpack with an organised plan.

Depending on how you sort your storage unit to begin with (each box labelled by room, or ordered by most essential to least essential), taking your time to remove and unpack the boxes might help to make unpacking a little bit easier. If your storage unit is labelled room by room, you could easily take boxes related to one room from the storage unit over a couple of weekends. If by essential to least essential, you can remove the essential boxes at first, and take your time with the others.

Taking your time to empty your storage unit won't add much to your storage rental cost, and will help to make the job go much more smoothly. Why stress yourself out with unpacking when you can take your time? Making moving house easier is what storage rental is all about, so make the most of it.

The Tetris Effect with Packing Materials

Stuffing a truck full of reasonably heavy boxes into a relatively small storage unit might sometimes seem a little daunting. You have to get all of the boxes to fit, and keep them accessible. Irritation sets in pretty quickly when you’re trying to match up oddly shaped appliances in a small, potentially hot storage space.

That’s why buying packing materials from your storage facility is the best idea. Tetris is a fun game, sure, but when you’re trying to make shapes stack on other shapes by physically lifting them around, it becomes tiresome. Proper packing materials – book boxes, tea chests – are designed to stack neatly together. It’s like playing a game of Tetris with just squares. Less fun, maybe, but certainly much easier. The storage boxes will stack one on top the other with ease, fitting perfectly together, and saving a lot of space. Best of all, you won’t get teetering towers of boxes in the storage unit – instead a sturdy base that can also support the other items in your storage unit.

The Tetris effect in your storage unit will help you pack efficiently, safely, and quickly. It won’t look nearly as cool as a perfectly designed Tetris game might –but really, it’s so much easier. With packing materials of similar size and shape, your storage unit will be able to fit as much as it possibly can, while still being easy to navigate to retrieve items during your storage rental. The Tetris effect – it’s the only way to go.