Stolen And Illegal Items
If you make the extremely poor life decision to steal something or get involved in the drug economy, you should keep it out of your storage. While police generally need a search warrant to get into your storage unit, there are more loopholes than for your living space.
State and Federal judges have held that your unit can be searched without a warrant if you’re behind on rent or if a friend you’ve given the key to lets them in. Best to stay away from a life of crime altogether.
Weapons
You’ve probably seen Storage Wars by now; you know if you fall way behind on your unit’s rent, it’ll be auctioned off. A variety of people come to these auctions, including people who might be restricted from owning weapons. If there are weapons in the unit, it could be a loophole.
Rather than restrict who can go to storage auctions, the law decides to restrict what you can store. So guns are illegal and most facilities restrict things like knives and nunchucks, too.
Dangerous Chemicals
You shouldn’t store household cleaning supplies, aerosols, pesticides, fertilizers, or gasoline in your unit. Most of those things are either a fire hazard or potentially poisonous.
Storage facilities are unique buildings; fire-fighters have described feeling like they’re in an oven when putting out a fire in a unit. You don’t want anything that could affect their breathing or make the fire worse.
Cash
Storage facility thefts do happen from time to time.. While insurance can cover your losses if things are stolen, most homeowner’s policies will only pay you back $200-$300 for cash losses.
It’s just not smart to store cash in a storage unit. Consider a safe-deposit box at a bank, instead.
Humans
Of course, it’s not legal to live in a storage unit, but it’s also a terrible idea. Self-storage units don’t have temperature or humidity controls and they don’t have adequate ventilation, either.
It’s not a good idea to keep any formerly alive humans in your unit, either. Should you default on your unit, your loved one will pass to someone who has no idea they were even there.
What You Can Store
Don’t worry, though. You can store pretty much everything else in your self storage unit.
From furniture and clothes to books and electronics, storage facilities are secure places to keep most of your things during a move. Find out what facilities are near you here!