If you are a college student, you might have acquired lots of stuff. You will face the problem of managing this stuff during the semester breaks, if you happen to live in an apartment which is away from your parent’s home. The break could be from a few weeks to several months. You need to carry your belongings all the way to your home by your car or by some other way. Moving your stuff like this is not always a perfect solution. Some stuff may not be welcome or you may not have enough space to accommodate all that stuff at your home.

The solution is, storing your stuff in a self storage. You can rent a storage unit at a self storage facility to store your belongings. The unit that you rent will be exclusive to you and no body else will enter it without your permission. You can keep your belongings in it during the break. Different sizes of storage units and different storage plans are generally provided by the storage companies. You can choose the best unit size that would suit your needs. If you are not sure of what size of unit to rent, you can always take the advice of the storage staff.

Your belongings will be very safe at the self storage. Most of the storage facilities have installed 24 hour video surveillance systems. Who ever comes in and who ever goes out will be recorded. Some facilities use normal locks while some provide sophisticated keypad controlled access. Individual door alarms are used for extra security. In addition to these, men on guard, gates and fences are also provided.

If you choose a self storage that offers wide range of different sized units, you can pay only for the space that you need. It is always better to choose a facility that is well connected by roads. It would be even better if the facility is close to your college.

If you know the duration and what you will be storing, you may pay a little advance and reserve a unit for you. You may get early bird discount if you plan in advance. The storage units near the campus may fill up quickly. So, plan in advance.

To pack up your belongings, you will need boxes. Find out if your storage facility provides boxes.

Some storage companies provide pick up and delivery service also.

Do not keep too many things in one box. It will be difficult to carry such heavily loaded boxes.

Some items like toxic material, inflammable products, pets, plants, food etc are not allowed by the storage companies. You need to remove batteries from the electronic gadgets to avoid leakages.

Make a note of what you packed in each box. Pack related stuff together.

When you have a closet full of stuff that needs to be organized, one of the things that you can do and should consider includes hiring a professional organizer or purchasing an organization system. In between these solutions, your closet might get scary. You can follow some of these tips for keeping your closet from ruling your life.

Make Sure You Have Enough Space

One of the advantages of professional with this type of organization is that they can assess your closet situation and help you determine whether you have sufficient space and if there is something you should do to either enhance your current space or add to it by supplementing it with some under-the-bed storage or using storage furniture to supplement your space. Just follow through here for more of these useful tips.

Know When to Fold Them

A lot of people think that they can save space by hanging up everything, but stacking certain items such as sweaters and knits is actually more effective for your space. You can fold them and stack them on top of each other. If you don’t have enough shelving, keep in mind that extra shelving is easy to build and cost effective to purchase.

Keep Frequently Used Items in Sight

Keep things that you are using frequently, or your go-to items, at eye level or below so you have easy access to them. On the other hand, keep items that you are not using as frequently in boxes up above eye level or even underneath your bed if you need to preserve your closet space as much as possible. This will ensure that you are able to access those things that you are grabbing for every day and help you maintain things in a proper rotation. This way, if you have a box of items and clothes in a box overhead that you haven’t opened or even thought about in months, you know you will be less likely to miss these items if you were to donate them.

Put Items in a Rotation

Make sure that you have items in a rotation. Many people use different-colored hangers to indicate which items were hung up and forgotten long ago with another color for clothes that are in the current rotation. You should also store off-season wear separately from clothes for the current season. Your closet will look much more cluttered in the summer if your tank tops and shorts are being crowded out by all of your winter weather wool slacks, sweaters, and scarves.

Donate Unused Items

Only keep those things that you are currently able to wear. Many people will hold on to items from high school or items from years past with the hope that they will fit into them again or because they have an emotional attachment to the items. Generally, to keep your closet from taking over your life and your clothes, shoes, and purses from overflowing off the shelves, make sure you are being realistic about what you are using now.

If you are planning to become a good self storage manager, here are some tips for you to achieve success in your career.

As a manager you need to handle many issues in an efficient manner. If not, you may face many consequences that would make your organization face some problems which might result in loss for the organization and finally you may even lose your job.

Here are some issues you should be aware of.

How would you react if the tenant asks you for discounts? You should be cool and if you do not have such intentions you should think a reasonable answer to satisfy your version such as explaining your efforts to run the organization and the expenses that you put to run the business and explain him the additional features your organization is providing to the customers.

If your company has less occupancy then you could accept his request and may provide him with nominal discount which will not lead to any loss to your organization.

How will you convince your tenant if you have to increase the rent?

Today in this costly world, prices will not be the same for long and they may increase almost day by day and in that case you have no other option but to increase the rent. But the tenants may not agree as soon as you announce the hike. It is a very critical situation for a manager to handle this. Here are some tips which might help you to tackle the situation.

Give the tenants sufficient time to adjust to increased rates in rent. Intimate the tenant about the issue in a reasonable time in advance. Add some extra benefits such as packing/unpacking etc and tell him that you are going to provide the best services you could.

What will you do if tenant tells you that he could not pay the rent?

This is a situation where you should be careful. Tenants may have many problems but the main motto of yours is to earn some money. You need to understand both the situations of yours and the tenants. So you need to enquire him when he could pay the money. If it is short time you may give him a chance otherwise you would have no option but to proceed in legal way either to claim the tenants policy or to auction his/her stuff.

What would you do if you find money in self storage?

Well the first word that would come from many is jack pot and some would say that they will inquire whether the money is of previous tenant but you should not do like that as one will not leave money such easily in a self storage and they even don’t like to store money there instead of bank so you should handle the situation carefully. You should definitely seek the help of the police.

Above are some of the tips which can help the self storage manager to tackle the situations in an effective manner.

One of the areas of the home that is frequently used but often used improperly is the garage. If you go out and take a look at your garage, what do you see? If you’re like most people, you see boxes and other items strewn across the floor, things leaning against the wall and a wide variety of other items that may be here or there. The one thing that is typically not seen in the garage is a car. If you find yourself in this situation, how can you choose a garage storage system that is going to be right for you?

One of the first things to consider is that there are many different systems that are available. Some of them are going to make good use of different areas of the garage, such as the area along the walls, the ceiling or perhaps even better use of the floor. In any case, it’s a good idea for you to take an inventory of the various items that are in the garage. Think about how they could be stored properly so that you would gain the most use available space. With those things in mind, it’s time for you to do some research.

A simple search on the Internet will provide you with a wide variety of options for storing items in the garage. It may be anything from hooks that allow you to hang bicycles from the ceiling to cabinets that will store things out of the way. You may also find a garage storage system that makes use of a pegboard. The garage pegboard is often something that is thought to only be useful for hanging tools. The fact of the matter is, it can hang much more than tools and will help to keep smaller items organized and off of the floor.

When you start to consider the various ways that you could store items along the walls of the garage, you may begin to open up the floor. Most people get excited when they get to that point and begin to look for other areas where they can store items. If you’re using a storage system, such as cupboards along the wall, consider the fact that you can also store items on top of those cupboards. This may be anything from pieces of wood to paint cans to empty boxes. Keep in mind, if those items should happen to fall off of the top of the cabinet when you are standing under it, it could cause some serious injuries. Most people do tend to stack lighter items up higher.

It may take a little bit of forethought but if you organize your garage properly, you will find you have much more storage space. You may also find that you are able to pull your car into the garage and keep it out of inclement weather. In any case, the organized area that is now your garage will be something that will benefit you and your family.

American use of storage containers has risen tremendously over the past few decades. Increased mobility and the fact that the average individual owns more and more stuff has made out-of-home storage the go-to option for a whopping 11% of Americans.

Security is undeniably a top priority. While theft isn’t exactly rampant, up to 8.9% of facilities have experienced break-ins. Whether you’re evaluating or moving into a new storage space, here are a few things to keep in mind.

What Are You Storing?

The degree of security that you’re going to need is directly dependent on what exactly you’re planning to store. Some items are in obvious need of protection. If you’re stashing jewelry, valuable art pieces, or anything small and expensive, then take more extreme measures.

Some less obvious targets also have to be kept in mind. Identity theft is a constant worry, and as many Americans keep old paper records lying around, some thieves may break in looking for sensitive personal information. One man’s trash is another man’s credit-card-unlocking treasure, so keep those documents buttoned up tight.

What Sort of Security Does a Facility Have?

Given how popular storage units are, there’s little surprise that you’ll find plenty of companies offering them. Options range from extremely basic, outdoor cargo units to high-tech castles that would make your average bank blush with envy.

Understand the situation. A unit for all of your excess junk doesn’t need more than the most basic options. Even then, if you plan on keeping anything you remotely care about in that unit, even for just a night, be wary. If you buy a bargain plan to store premium material, you only have yourself to blame if problems pop up.

Will Your Unit Be Indoors or Outdoors?

Outdoor options are less expensive, and if you’re just storing an old treadmill or some furniture, they’ll do just fine. But they’re easier to gain access to and harder for on-site security to monitor.

Is a Guard or Site Manager Around During High-Traffic Periods?

Personnel can vary radically from company to company. Will your unit be under surveillance? Even the shoddiest storage operation should have at least a few closed circuit television cameras set up. Better ones should have even more, and hopefully someone to monitor them.

If you’re looking at storage, some fancier options may be available. Upscale facilities may have biometric locks or multi-layered security, both of which may be necessary if you’re storing valuable items.

One of the biggest decisions you need to make while opting for a self storage is space. Yes, you need to decide how much space you require to store your goods. Self storage provides a variety of sizes and units ranging from size of a box to a ware house. If you decide for a very small storage unit, you will not be able to keep all your goods. If you opt for a big unit, you will be wasting your money on the area which you are not using.

You can always increase or reduce the space at self storage according to your needs. If you are planning to store your goods for a short term, you may require a considerable unit.

Self storage providers lease different variety of units to residential and business tenants. Mostly the sizes of a self storage include –

1. 5X5: This holds very well, if you have very less number of items to store for a very few days. It can accommodate chest of drawers, office files, clothes, mini house hold items etc.

2. 10X5: This is approximately the size of a large wardrobe. This can hold good, if you are using the storage for storing outdoor furniture or small furniture, small boxes, motor cycle, books for students, business documents etc.

3. 10X10: This is size of a Kid’s bed room or a mini bedroom. It can accommodate furniture and belongings of one bed room.

4. 10X20: This can hold all the items that can fit in two to three bedrooms with other appliances as well. It can accommodate a one big vehicle or a truck as well.

5. 20X20: These spaces usually will be available for limited basis. It can accommodate two big vehicles. This is usually used for business purpose.

Since, you have many options, the only thing you need to do is to decide which self storage unit suits your need. The best source of advice would be your self storage provider itself. Usually the self storage providers will be extremely experienced in giving the best estimation.

A few tips to decide the space at your self storage:

1. Prepare the list of items which you are going to store.

2. Take measurements of the largest item in your list. This will help you in deciding the average unit you would need.

3. If you are going to store your entire house, you can provide the room count in your house to the storage provider, they can estimate your space.

4. If you are going to shift your storage room alone to a storage space, you can provide the measurements of the storage room to the service provider.

Self storage often will provide package facilities to their customers. If your belongings are packed by them, they can estimate the space by the size of the boxes and the count. So, plan well and decide before saving your belongings at your self storage.

Some people incorrectly assume that self storage involves a very easy management process. This may hold true in the facilities of past times, but not in today’s life. Today, market is using high-tech and highly sophisticated facilities due to increase in competitive nature of the business. This also intensified the management requirement which in turn connected to managing facilities. Management is giving high importance on hiring and training their force. Due to recent innovations in management techniques and wide range usage of computer software in self storage industry, management has to increase their band width in providing best service to their customers.

Now-a-days managers are well experienced in the laws of powers in which the unit operates, including state laws governance, managing of accounts, auction, withdrawals etc. Today’s market has professionally trained managers, well experienced in sales, servicing, marketing, maintenance, accounting and computer operating. They play a key role to a successful business.

The recent growth in self storage industry is Mini storage management. These companies belong to several owners. The management company may operate its client facilities under a common name, which is responsible in hiring, training and providing supervision to the facility managers. The management activities include development projects, reports, payrolls, payable accounts, customer invoicing, etc. A known fact to the self storage industry is that principle markets for self storage is residents and families moving from one place to another.

Self storage managers hold different responsibilities. They own responsibility for a facility management, maintenance (daily and monthly), assemblage, security, improvements, sales, customer service, site inspections, auctions, recruiting and motivating the sales force, maintaining progressive discipline at site and more. Management expects a wide skill set which include handling of operational essentials, customer service, phone etiquette, legal responsibilities etc. They must define their markets, regulate the rental rates & concessions, deal with media and should also have a very good knowledge on online marketing.

A quality unit at a proper site will definitely draw the biggest business and can greatly expand the market. This is the reason why a well designed and properly operated unit will become more attractive. The primary influence on customer utilization is market awareness. Since, the market introduction is already completed; managers need to focus on market growth and maturation. A few steps to attract self storage tenants:

1. Create a headline that conveys your right message in your mail promotions.

2. Create publicity to minimum extent using outrageous messages. Saying something shocking would draw attention but not all the time.

3. Try with easy posturing by telling them why your self storage is the best giving the benefits of renting your storage.

4. Use pictures and images which draw a greater attention in your promotions. Make sure the tenants are convinced with your paintings. Try showing them that you provide safety to their goods and hence solve their storage problems easily.

5. Try to tell the prospects precisely what you want them to do. Indicate your offers and promo codes attractively, so that they can approach you.

A typical garage door repair can cost from as low as $100 to almost $500, but it usually falls in the $250 range. You might be surveying a broken garage door, scratching your head, and thinking, “Why not just save the money and fix it myself?” Well, let’s look at a few common issues and determine if this is a wise course of action.

A crooked garage door is rather easily fixed. It is usually a result of one of the door cables coming off the drum. To fix this, however, you need a cable puller. You attach this device to the cable on the good side of the door and crank it until there is a little slack on the bottom. Then, reset the other cable in the drum and go back to release the cable puller and come along from the other side. The issue with this type of garage door repair is that unless you do this for a living, the odds of you having these specific tools in your toolbox are slim. A cable puller costs around $100 and, unfortunately, has no other practical household uses like a wrench or screw gun. My advice: call a professional.

A noisy garage door is indicative of steel rollers moving inside metal brackets. This is also an easy fix, for the most part. These steel rollers can be replaced with quieter nylon rollers that offer similar durability. The middle garage door hinges can be taken off one at a time, being held by four screws. Once off, the steel roller slides right out of one hole – but be aware that the other hole is for pivoting. Slide the nylon roller in and replace the hinge. The roller on the top of a garage door is usually held with a quarter-inch nut and comes off just as easily. The tricky part is the bottom roller. After detaching the garage door opener for safety, you need to raise the door about halfway to where the upper and lower brackets meet, bend the bracket to free the bottom of the door, detach the rope from the roller, and then pry it out. This can be rather cumbersome for your average DIY-er. If you’re up to the challenge, it can be done, or you can live with just one noisy roller on either side. Alternatively, you can call a pro.

The simplest and most common problem is with the garage door opener. The first thing to check, as obvious as it may be, is to see if it’s plugged in. If it is, you might try unplugging it and replugging it, as this may reset the sensors. Also, the sensors on the sides of the doors may have dusty lenses that can be wiped with a damp rag. Another overlooked solution is to check the batteries in the remote. You may need to reprogram the remote, which may mean tracking down the owner’s manual. Beyond that, pick up the phone and contact a professional.

Garage door repair, for the most part, goes well beyond the skill involved in changing a light bulb. Many videos online offer tutorials in fixing common issues, but between tools, time, and cost, there’s a reason for the yellow pages.

Affordability and being creative are two main aspects people look for when they think about building a garage, whether it is a car garage or a shop garage. If we talk about being creative then the first thing which comes in our mind is what design to choose because there are plenty of designs available in the market according to your requirement. These days, creative garage plans are in a high demand, which could give your house a perfectly elegant look that also increases the value of the property.

An affordable garage plan includes all the stuff which has a low price yet the best in the industry and also the natural wood (recommended for a garage) from the forest which you are going to use. If you have never built any building then a garage is a perfect place to start. In this era of online availability, forget about the worry because more than enough designs are available in the market which are innovative yet beautiful and they come under your budget. You can check internet website by yourself to check the price.

There are people available who can change or modify your old garage to a creative masterpiece. Normally people do this by themselves but hiring a professional means you are going to experience something more than usual. If you are a busy person then you can hire an engineer, no doubt he will give his best shot but if you want to do something by your own then it is a great opportunity to show people what you can do with some large pieces of wood and other tools. You just need a design that will blow the mind of the person who sees it for the first time. You can choose your garage plan design from hundreds of online sources. All you have to do is submit your requirement and download a blueprint of your garage design. Some offer this print for free and some charge for it. But that’s not the actual thing to do, but to decide from many amazing designs on which you are going to work upon.

For some people who think a garage plays an important role in their life, you can turn your garage into a piece of art by using some additional settings like lighting and a beautiful floor. The fluorescent lights are best suited for your garage idea. You can use some fluorescent lights like CRI, T12, T4, T5, T8, CT and among these, T8 is the best to use. The size of the light depends upon the size of garage you want to design. You can turn your garage into a shop or a designer apartment and it is not about what things you put in your garage to make it look amazing it is about how you use them to make it one. That’s where a creative mind starts from.

All these installations provide their owners to express their creativity and you can be the talk of neighborhood if you have great design to work upon. To keep the safety in mind is important too and you must make sure that all the safety guidelines are fulfilled.

Though a creative and affordable garage must be a safe garage too.

When your home or office has reached its absolute limit, a personal storage unit can dramatically reduce useless clutter. Most families have found that leaving a number of bulky or seasonal items at a secure facility can help keep their homes clean and spacious. Some of the top items to store are furniture, seasonal clothes, holiday decorations, and collections. For all the solutions these units provide, there are some items better left at home or at the office.

Storage units are often run on a contractual basis, but if a renter lapses on their bills, the unit may go up for auction. This is why it is a particularly poor idea to store any confidential or personal information in an offsite facility. If something happens and you fail to pay on time, your personal financial statements, tax records, or bills could end up in the hands of anybody. Also, if the unit is being used by a business, the potential information could include the private information of any number of clients or employees. Despite all this, you could store simple non-confidential files at an off-site location. Safe items would be status reports, printed graphics for presentations, and any other mundane forms or memos.

Don’t put food in a storage unit. With very few exceptions, this rule should never be broken, and most facilities include a prohibition against doing so in your rental agreement. Food rots and attracts a legion of creatures that infest and destroy not just your own unit, but potentially an entire lot. Perhaps you think canned food is a safe bet, but even that should be avoided. Despite what you may have heard, canned food does go bad, and a percentage of it will begin to grow toxic bacteria. The cans eventually burst, which leads to not only pests but a potential bio-hazard. An exception to this rule would be wine and other spirits, if it is a temperature controlled environment. Properly stored wine and spirits can last essentially forever if they remain unopened.

While everything has some kind of value, high-priced items or collectibles should remain at home. It can be tempting to clean out the clutter of a collector’s room by putting everything in storage, but the potential for major losses is also present. When shrinking a collection to better accommodate a new living situation, it is a far better option to sell your items than to utilize a long term storage unit. While most facilities are safe and secure, there is always the chance of a fire, flood, or robbery. Your insurance would cover these items at home, but it may not compensate for your valuables at an offsite location. However, a unit can be helpful in the short time while buyers are lined up and deals are made.

Keeping your home or office clean is important for living a less stressed and clutter-free life, but it’s always important to learn before you act. Make smart decisions when it comes to your possessions and avoid all of these potentially negative situations.