If you're diligent and careful when you're stuffing each individual box and household appliance into your self storage unit, it's often surprising how much the unit can hold. However, if you want to guard against some of your boxes getting crushed as a result of toppling box piles, putting things in slowly and carefully isn't always enough. To prevent crushed boxes when you're filling your storage unit to capacity, utilize these three tools.
Rope Connected To Roof With Duct Tape
Large objects like bed frames and bookshelves are hard to efficiently fit into a relatively small storage space because they can tip over at any time and apply their weight to a fragile pile of boxes. If they're held steady by ropes connected to the unit's roof, some of that weight will be accounted for and the risk of unexpected movement is drastically reduced.
While metal hooks attached to the roof with screws are ideal instruments to hold rope, they aren't always an option in a self storage unit you don't own outright. Securing the ropes with long pieces of duct tape packed close together is a good compromise as long as you're not planning on suspending your appliances and other large objects completely in the air.
Yardstick To Slide Down Box Corner Spaces
The rows and columns of boxes you set up need to be perfectly straight if you want to both maximize the amount of stuff you can store and minimize the risk of one of the boxes falling out of alignment and causing the pile above it to topple. If there's a tall pile of three or four boxes in front of you and it's surrounded by other box piles, shove a yardstick down the small spaces where the box corners meet to ensure that one or more boxes haven't shifted and partially fallen into them.
Wooden Board To Use As A Makeshift Foot Rail
If there isn't much space for you to walk around when you first enter the unit, some kind of foot rail is necessary to stop you from accidentally kicking the bottom of a box pile and causing it to fall over. This is especially important if you're planning on leaving the storage unit alone for an extremely long time because it'll be easy to forget about being careful when you finally do open the door.
Set a long wooden board directly in front of the closest set of boxes to the door and secure it to the ground with either duct tape or some type of weight. Most easy to obtain materials softer than wood that come in a convenient shape for a makeshift foot rail will have a tendency to snap and strike the box piles if you kick really hard.
For more information, contact a storage facility like Preferred Storage.
Share14 October 2015
Having to place children's furniture in a small bedroom presented a problem for me. With two growing kids, I needed a dresser to accommodate both boys, as well as two beds. With two beds, desk and chair, toy chest and floor lamp, the room seemed overly crowded. My solution came with a highly functional bunk bed. Bunk beds take up minimal space. Better yet, my choice was a bunk that included a storage drawer. This compartment is used for storing the boys' small toys and other necessities. I didn't have to have a separate toy chest, so I reduced clutter which was great! When you have multiple children all in one room, you need all the help you can get!
