Be Shelfish: How to Organise Your Storage Unit

Using a storage unit doesn’t mean it has to be a junk room full of forgotten treasures.

Your items should be with us because you love your things or they still come in handy.

Whether it’s for household furniture or business files, storage units can still be usable spaces that you to enjoy spending time in.

The trick is to be organised so you can continue to make use of these items. Here is how.

Create Space for easy access

Using the walls around the perimeter of the room to line up your shelves and bookcases, establish a neat path granting you access to all the files, folders and boxes you need. This saves you a job moving boxes out the way each time you need to look for something.

Establish structure

Create order in the chaos using colourful boxes, crates, mini plastic shelving units or sets of plastic drawers. Glass jars and shoeboxes can also work to store miscellaneous items. Don’t pile everything up on top or in front of everything, as this will obscure a lot of possessions, which leads to more mess when you come to rummaging through everything.

Organise using an inventory system

Ensure there is a place for everything, and you can track where to find documents, letters, photographs, CDs, vinyls or anything else you may need. Use an inventory system. This can be as basic as a folder with everything recorded, or an Excel spreadsheet.

Get colour-coding and labelling

Now you have everything organised, well-structured and you can reach it all without moving boxes out the way. The next stage is to adopt a system for relocating everything in conjunction with your record system. Each bookcase could be colour-coded using crates in red, blue or yellow. Each box within that section needs to have an individual label using an alphabetical or numerical system that makes sense. This way, you don’t have to spend hours searching for the correct box.

Once you have your shelving solution complete, keep your furniture items in the middle so you’ve got a place to sit down while you sort through your items, or if you just need a cup of tea.