One of the hardest places in the home to keep organized is the garage. Unless you make it a habit to clean it on a regular basis or you decide early on not to allow a single box or item to be stored there, chances are you have had spent a weekend gutting out and clearing out your garage at one time or another. Fortunately there are tons of tips and tools and ideas that are now available for homeowners to take advantage of that will help with garage organization.
Moving things that you want to keep, but don’t necessarily have room for inside your home, to Affordable Storage in Fall River is one way to clear out the space. Taking time to organize your things, box them up, label them properly and set up your self storage facility so you can quickly locate items in the future can be challenging, but beneficial.
Let’s face it, it’s bad enough to actually have to spend a weekend cleaning the garage, most people don’t want to spend another weekend organizing a move to rent storage space in Fall River for seasonal or other infrequently used items. However, if you can do it right the first time, your efforts will really pay off. You’ll end up with a neat and organized garage and will be able to find what you need at your Fall River storage facility when you need it.
Tip #1 – Think Outside the Box
When it comes to storing your items, whether at home in your garage or at Affordable Storage in Fall River, think of new ways to organize your belongings. Garage racks can be added to the ceiling for stowing holiday ornaments, spare tires and other things that you will want easy access to, but won’t need to get to on a daily or weekly basis. Using the wall, in the form of hangers or metal shelving units, can help you to stack things safely and neatly, labeling them if you would like, so they can be retrieved more easily when you need them.
Putting things on shelves, hanging them from walls or ceilings and thinking of new ways to keep your boxes and belongings off of the floor has other benefits as well. Extreme weather conditions, such as high winds and rain or flooding, could serious damage your things. Choosing plastic air-tight boxes instead of cardboard packaging can also help to protect your things from flooding and leaks, as well as the typical dust, dirt and debris that makes its way into your garage. Air-tight boxes also prevent pests from getting into your treasured family photo album or destroying grandma’s handmade Christmas tree angel.
Tip #2 – Take It All Out at Once
One way to really dig deep with garage organization is to take everything out of your garage at once, placing it on tarps if you need to so you can protect your things on the lawn or driveway. Once you get an idea of how much stuff is really in there, you will be able to determine whether you need to rent storage space in Fall River at a self storage facility or if you just need to throw out a bunch of stuff. If you decide to use a facility like Affordable Storage Fall River, you can simply box the things up that you want to store rather than putting them back into the garage.
This trick is also beneficial if you want to clean out a self storage facility that has been in use for many years. Sometimes we put things away in storage that we think we will want to keep, but years later we forget all about the item and realize we don’t need it anymore. Taking all of your things out so you can look at them and assess what stays and what goes can help you clear more space in your storage units in Fall River to store other things.
Tip #3 – Make Sorting Piles
One of the best tricks in the organizing business is to sort through your things by what you want to do with them. Making a pile, stack or box of things that you want to keep, another for the things that you want to throw away, another for things that you want to donate and finally, another for the things that you want to keep in your self storage facility, can really help you to streamline the process.
Questions that you should ask yourself in order to choose which pile to put your things in includes: do I love it? do I need it? how often do I use this? could this item be used by someone else? is it broken or damaged beyond repair? A lot of these questions are used by professional home and garage organization experts to help individuals or families clear out the clutter. Recycling things you no longer want and donating things you no longer need will also help to reduce the amount of items that make their way into the local landfill.
Tip #4 – Begin Grouping Items
Once you decide what goes, what stays and what gets stored, it’s time to begin grouping like items together for better structured organization. When you rent storage space in Fall River to keep seasonal items or things that you don’t use on a regular basis, you will still want to make sure that you know where those things are inside your self storage facility unit so you can find them when you need them. Labeling boxes, creating a diagram of your storage unit or making a list and coordinating it with the location of each item can be very helpful.
Use all of the tools that you can to make grouping, storing and safeguarding your belongings even easier. Plastic storage tubs, label makers, duct tape, packing materials, metal storage shelving units – anything that will help you with your garage organization goals at Affordable Storage Fall River, as well as in your own home. Once you get this pattern of organizing things down by use, type or by some other criteria that means something to you, it will be easy to carry on this method into your home to organize bedrooms, kitchens, closets and more.
Where to Rent Storage Space in Fall River
If you are ready to make the move from having a crammed, trashy garage filled with odds and ends to a sort of garage organization utopia, don’t hesitate to start by coming by to rent storage space in Fall River at Affordable Storage. We have a wide variety of self storage facility units available and we also offer RV, vehicle and boat storage on-site to help you clear out your driveway or the side of your home. Stop by our location in Fall River or give us a call at 508-675-1177 to find out more about our units or to get pricing on our rentals.