When it comes to keeping things safely packed away for a long time, it might surprise you how much a little bit of planning can benefit you. Moving and packing your belongings can be incredibly stressful. It’s a time of change and upheaval that can leave you feeling frazzled and thinking more about how quickly you can get it done and over with than anything else. This in turn leads to rushed decisions, cut corners, and, ultimately, can make everything that much more stressful than if a solid plan had been established ahead of time. For example, an improperly labeled box of fragile items is stored away below a heavier box. In a few weeks those fragile items are still okay, but in a few years they can be slowly crushed as the cardboard around them gives way to gravity. Nobody makes mistakes on purpose, but those mistakes can be aggravating, costly, or even outright heartbreaking, especially if the fragile items were of sentimental value. So let’s talk about how a little bit of precaution can go a long way in making sure that your storage experience is a positive one.
First, it’s important to make certain that you have the right supplies on hand, but what supplies are the ‘right’ supplies? Cardboard boxes are inexpensive, but can wear down with use. You probably have plenty of cardboard boxes around your home, in your garage or crawlspace, all full of various things. It can be tempting to unpack and repack these boxes with all the things you want to store, but after a few years in the garage they might not be as sturdy as they once were. Not only that, but if they already had plenty of items in them, and need to be repacked, where are all those things going to go if you use the boxes for something else? If you do use these boxes for long term storage, it’s best to leave older things at the top of the stack, especially those boxes containing fragile items.
Secondly, always label everything clearly. A few rolls of tape and some markers go a long way in making your storage space organized and easily accessible. One incredibly helpful tip is to label all sides of each box, including the top, and maybe even the bottom. This way when the boxes get stacked together you won’t have to dig around to find the one you’re looking for. While moving, it’s very easy to accidentally rotate a box just so a single label gets covered up. Secondly, you don’t have to write down everything that’s in a single box on one piece of tape. Single words or phrases written as boldly as possible to clue you in on what you need to know about each box in a way that makes sense to you, specifically. Why the tape? So you can remove the labels and reuse the boxes later, if you like, it looks much cleaner and is much easier to understand than seeing three or four words scribbled out in magic marker years after those boxes were originally packed.
Lastly, managing your space is key to packing everything neatly and efficiently. Having good focus can actually be a bit of a curse in this regard. You may get it in your head that a given item must somehow fit in an almost-full box, and spend lots of time trying to get it all to fit ‘just right’. Instead take into account the sizes of your items, and store a combination of various items in each box starting with the largest items first, then filling in the space around them. The same goes for your unit as a whole. Fit your largest items in first, things like mattresses or large pieces of furniture. When it comes to storing furniture, you can often store chairs or small end tables on top of other pieces of furniture, then stack boxes atop those.
With all these tips it should be easy to turn what can be a stressful and confusing experience into an organized and painless process. Check out the rest of our website for more helpful hints, or rent your unit online today and get started packing right away.