It’s that time of year where we start thinking about organising our homes and getting ready to enjoy the holidays. You might want to do it before Christmas Day’s events or plan that New Year’s resolution early. Whatever your reasons, you’ll need to have a plan ready and stick to it, with a view of fitting it all in. And we believe that storage is the key to making it a successful endeavour.

Storing away your everyday household goods could be the result of many different situations. It might be because you want to declutter your home, redecorate a room or because your kids have moved out. Whatever it may be, Instore Storage has the advice to hand. You’ll have a range of storage options to choose from – all ending with a lovely, tidy house or flat that you can take forward into 2022.

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It is important for your peace of mind when moving house that you are confident that your possessions will not be damaged during any stage of the moving process. There are many ways to help put your mind at ease and ensure the safety of your belongings. Many are down to some common-sense methods that won’t cost you much upfront and will reduce issues of breakages.

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At Instore Storage, we like to provide our customers and followers with real-world examples of how storage applies to various situations. That’s because we want to be informative and give some context about how it benefits people. Online blogs are sometimes slightly vague and miss the most important aspect of highlighting how to apply storage.

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When we think about how we store things, the default position is to keep everything at home or in the office, where we have dedicated rooms or spaces. The problem with this begins when space runs out, and we start cramming things on top of wardrobes and under beds. For a workplace, change this to a back office or buying more filing cabinets.

Before you know it, you don’t have anywhere else for things to go. Not only that, you’ve lost a number of rooms in the process, and it starts to become a major problem, specifically for businesses where compliance and spacing regulations are strict. That’s why it’s important to consider how you’re currently storing things and whether it’s the best choice to do it yourself.

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Instore Storage is your local business storage close to Gillingham, our closest town, with a train to our warehouses. Why go any distance with your important business documentation? If you have found yourself at that ‘end-of-year time’, now is the perfect moment to consider what to do for your business storage needs. Whether you want to clear office space or you’re a business wanting to store your annual paperwork, legal documents, or business-critical information, we can help.

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For thousands of people in Dorset every week, sport is a massively important part of their lives, not just a hobby. It’s an excellent way to exercise and socialise with people for team games or as part of a community. Even for solo sports, you get the chance to chat with peers in between sessions and the organisers.  We’re hopefully heading towards fewer restrictions, making it easier to take part and have spectators.

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Our Top 5 Recommendations for what not to store may seem simple and self explanatory enough, but you’d be surprised by how many people try to put these into storage.

Animals, Humans and Plants.

Alive or Dead – Storage Units are not viable places that people can keep their pets in whilst they go away on holiday – and we have been asked to.

We do not permit residency of any kind in any of our storage units – for your safety and for the safety of our other client’s storage units.

Storage Units do not have any real light – once the doors are closed, then there’s no sunlight inside them – therefore, you may find your plants not looking how you originally put them in.

Tyres

You will find a number of Storage companies will say no to tyres and the reason for this is dead simple – it costs a lot of money to dispose of tyres and we often get stung with the bill when people leave them behind.

Combustible, Flammable, Hazardous or Toxic Materials.

Simply ask yourself – “If I add fire to this, would it explode?” If you can say yes, then you won’t be allowed to store it in most Storage facilities.

This includes compressed gas tanks, fuel of any kind, lamp and motor oil, grease, fertilisers, paint, cleaners, chemicals, toxic or biological waste. Asbestos or products which may contain asbestos are not permitted and nor are fireworks.

Electronics

Storing items in Storage Units means you should be prepared for temperature changes. Therefore, electrical units will suffer with sudden changes of temperatures in storage units unless it is catered for them specifically. This will have a detrimental effect on your electrical equipment and may cause them to break.

Anything stolen or illegal in the UK.

Our Storage Units are based in the UK and therefore we follow the UK laws as to what is considered stolen or illegal.Therefore, if any of your items are deemed illegal or stolen, then you can not store it with us.

We do have a full list of things that we do not permit or recommend not storing in our Storage Units and, for more information on what you can and cannot store, please contact us.

Compromise is the basis of a good relationship, so they say, but already I digress, we’re into February already and the year is fleeting past and the thought struck me this is probably the moment most couples or considering moving in together. Engagements happen at Christmas, weddings in the Spring and Summer, the cold, wet winter evenings just have a way of drawing people together. Am I wrong?

It’s one of the great things about Winter – the planning, what are we all going to do when the weather improved and this handy Top Tips is just to get you thinking about what it takes (as far as your possessions are concerned) to move in together.

1. Be generous
   Times have changed – in the old day’s people moved in together a lot earlier, married a lot earlier and education finished a lot earlier, what that means is that these days you’ve had far more time to gather ‘possessions’ and that means more and that requires generosity of spirit to either depose or reduce the combined load.
2. Be strict
   Too many possessions and you may start to wonder what to do with it all… do you really need two pianos or kitchen tables or even two TV’s.  Yes I know this sounds obvious, but a little bit of strictness goes a long way and it may be time to find new homes for many of your possessions.
3. Be considerate
   You might not like the yellow leather gaming bean bag, but someone brought it at some point, and they loved it, so take that on board with all possessions, it works both ways.  Storage, dare I say it is always a possibility.

Most of the time people moving in together are usually downsizing, and I say that with a hint of sadness, whether moving from a family home or a Flat sharing with friends and students, moving from a multiple roomed house to a 1 bed or studio can be daunting in terms of possessions.  We think when it comes to reducing possessions you have three options.

1. Give away to friends and family, share what you don’t need
2. Storage – is an option, if you think the move is a temporary or stepping stone to a bigger house, then go for it.  but watch out for long-term unnecessary storage, don’t waste hard earned and precious cash storing things that are not worth it.
3. Environmentally dispose of old possessions.  But that we mean really think through the options before consigning old sofas to the town dump.  We say this from the bottom of our hearts, recycling, or giving to those in need is often a far better way to dispose of old furniture.

I hope these Tips help some people.  It’s all fairly obvious at the end of the day.  If you are ever in doubt about how to deal with your possessions, just email us your query and we will do our best to give advice.

Spring is on its way – it’s time to start thinking about swapping your storage! Using self-storage to store items not in-season helps free up space in your house as well as helping give you that spring feeling and a fresh start to the season. Here are a few tips to make swapping your spring items out of storage.

Make a list of winter items which you would like to store

Go through and sort out exactly what you want to be putting into storage over the summer season. Christmas decorations and snow gear is a good place to start before moving on to less obvious contenders. Perhaps you have some thick blankets and winter duvets which will take up a large amount of space in your cupboards at home? Keep this list as it will come in useful when you swap back your storage in the autumn.

Sort out your Wardrobe

In the UK, where we can experience all four seasons in a single day, its very easy to be short of space in your wardrobe and this is when self- storage is perfect. Make sure that you properly clean any clothes, polish any boots before storing them over the summer. Go through and make sure that there aren’t any clothes that you could get rid of or donate instead of just throwing them into storage.

Work out what you want to take out of storage

It is very helpful to have a list of what you have put into storage so you can work out exactly what items you want to take out again without having to go to your storage unit and rifle around! Sports gear, bicycles and children’s toys might be top of your list but don’t forget other items such as gardening equipment. It is much better to make sure that you have everything that you need the first time round so that you don’t have to keep coming back to retrieve you belongings from storage.

Spring cleaning 

Take this opportunity to do some spring cleaning in your storage space, you’ll be very glad of this come autumn.

Take a look at our flexible storage solutions here.

When preparing to put your house on the market, you need to ensure that your home is not cluttered with all of your belongings first. Here are some top tips on what to put in storage when selling your home and where to put your belongings.

What to put in storage

• • Personal pictures and souvenirs: It is important to have a few well-placed pictures to make your house a “show home” but avoid having endless family photos and personalised pictures. Remember, prospective buyers are looking for their home, not yours
  • Spare items: Anything you don’t use on a daily basis that can help get rid of clutter
  • Kitchware: Try to keep the kitchen neutral and have clear work surface for people to view
  • Clothes: We all have a lot of clothes in our cupboards that we don’t wear. Take this opportunity to sort out your cupboards and show off some free space in your home

Where to put it
inStore offers secure storage in its own easily accessible depots providing dry, safe and secure storage at competitive rates. Click here to look at our flexible storage solutions to store large or small quantities for the short or long term – perfect for when you are waiting to sell your house.