Packing up your possessions for self storage? A few handy tips

16/05/17

Maybe you’re downsizing and need somewhere to keep all of your furniture and belongings until you decide where to put them in your new home. Perhaps you’re going travelling and want to store everything you own in one place until you come back.

No matter what the reason may be for putting your possessions in self-storage in the UK, you need to know how best to pack them to ensure they will remain in one piece and will be easy to locate when you eventually come back to them. Here are a few handy self-storage packing tips.

Use wardrobe boxes to store your clothes

If you have so many clothes that they spill out of your wardrobe, the temptation is to throw big, unsorted piles of them into several boxes. Yet by doing this, you could ruin the shape of your clothes and waste valuable packing space.

Also, try to resist folding every piece of clothing into small squares in an attempt to maximise room in your box. Not only will you struggle to find certain items once you come to unpack, remember that some clothes, like your favourite dress or your best shirt, simply weren’t designed to be folded.

The answer is to place all of your clothes in wardrobe boxes. Everything will be hung up side by side, so you’ll easily be able to find the items you need, while those extra special clothes won’t lose their shape. Furthermore, wardrobe boxes are lightweight, so transporting your clothing to and from the storage unit will be simple and straightforward.

Make sure you organise your home office before packing it up

If you run your business from home, it goes without saying that you’ll have a lot of admin to organise and pack. Rather than placing everything as it is in one enormous box and thinking you’ll get to it in six months, set aside enough time to sort through everything from your office. Then, when you do come to unpack, you’ll easily be able to find everything you need.

Armed with a rubbish bag, sort your papers into chronological piles and clearly label what each box contains. This will save you having to rifle through box after box when you eventually come back to them.

And make sure you buy boxes with handles so you can carry them without strain – it’s surprising how much piles of paper can weigh.

The proper way to pack plates

You can’t afford to be lazy when packing plates; fail to wrap them carefully, and guarantee you’ll end up with a heap of smashed kitchenware.

First, seal the boxes along the flaps using extra-strength tape. Remember that plates can be extremely heavy when piled on top of each other, and you don’t want the boxes to give out at the bottom. Once that’s done, you should wrap each plate in something that will cushion it, such as bubble wrap. Cut corners at your own risk – your plates are more likely to remain in one piece if you wrap them all separately.

Prevent the packed plates from moving around by taping them all together in a tower, and fill any surplus space in the boxes with packing materials or towels. After sealing the tops of the boxes with more tape, don’t forget to label them “FRAGILE” so that you know what you’re dealing with when you eventually retrieve them from the self-storage unit.

If you’re placing your possessions in self-storage, StorePAK have all of the boxes and packing materials you’re looking for, so get in touch now.