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Things You Can Hide in a Self-Storage Unit
What can hide in a self-storage unit, you ask? It’s a great question because the answer is: Lots of things!

The most obvious scenario for needing a big place to hide stuff is Christmas-time when you have little kids. Say you’ve got a giant dollhouse that you don’t want your 6-year-old girl to see. The perfect place to stash that princess castle is a self-storage unit!

Self storage isn’t just for huge toys either. Let’s say you’ve bought your 9-year-old son a drone for Christmas. Your self-storage unit is the perfect place to keep it a secret.

Even smaller items can be tucked away in a self-storage unit. Consider the situation where you’ve bought your fiancée a diamond engagement ring. And throw on to that the fact the she likes to poke around your place for things you may have hidden. She’ll never think to go over to your storage unit, and if you don’t give her a key to the storage unit, she couldn’t get in anyway. Now you can really surprise her at Christmas!

Even when it’s not Christmas, you can use your storage unit to hide all sorts of stuff. Birthday presents? Your storage unit is perfect for keeping a great gift under wraps.

Sensitive financial documents that don’t need to fall into the wrong hands? Why who would ever think to look in a storage unit for something like that. And, again, you’ve got it locked up anyhow, so no one is going to find your papers.

The mind runs wild at all the things that can be hidden in a storage unit. Just keep it legal!

ONLINE AUCTIONS – The best-known auctions for property left abandoned at self-storage facilities take place in person, on site, with a real-live auctioneer.
Some of those auctions have started moving online, however, and more than a few people are concerned that the auctions might not be on the up-and-up.
The same potential problems that occur with online auctions can also occur with live auctions, says Lonnie Bickford, who owns a storage facility in Louisiana. Buyers, as well as facility owners trying to sell items, simply need to take the same precautions with an online auction as they would in person.
Bickford offers some tips: Pay attention to the invoice that you receive from the auction website to make sure you receive the correct contents, and not those from a different unit. Cross-reference photos to make certain the site has assigned the correct goods to the appropriate buyer or seller.
As long as you do these things, an online auction can work just as well as an in-person auction, Bickford says.
 
HOME AWAY FROM HOME – Sometimes people fall on hard times and can’t make their monthly rent payment. When that happens, you run the danger of being evicted from your home.
Many people faced this situation move into their self-storage unit as a temporary fix until permanent shelter can be found. Unfortunately, there are some jurisdictions that don’t look favorably on those arrangements.
When a Missouri storage facility owned has found self-storage squatters, he’s been referring them to a local homeless shelter or social-service agency.
 
GOING UP? – What’s the latest trend in the design of self-storage facilities? Build vertical, of course.
In East Tennessee, several new self-storage facilities are under construction that look more like office towers than the sprawling storage facilities of yore. A facility that’s three stories tall isn’t uncommon.
“By going vertical, developers are able to pay more for high-profile sites that have strong visibility, a key factor for success,” real estate broker Josh Flory wrote for USA Today Network.

Many of you are wondering, just how big is a 5X5 self-storage unit? Let’s show you …

You can fit 54,264 Apple iPhone X smartphones in a 5X5 self-storage unit (assuming the unit is 8 feet tall).

You could fit about 1,890 one-terabyte direct attach storage boxes would fit in a 5X5 unit (depending on which brand of storage box you’ve bought).

You can fit 5.64 million marbles in it.

A 5X5 unit would hold about 90 hoverboards.

You can fit 116,736 Starbucks gift cards in one.

It would hold about 7,220 Fingerlings Interactive Baby Monkeys.

You could fit 384 Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners in a 5X5 unit.

You can fit 80 Sony X800E 4K Ultra HD Smart TVs in it (seriously).

So, as you can see, you can fit a whole lot of just about anything in a 5X5 self-storage unit.

PACKED TO THE GILLS – Ever noticed during a recent run to your self-storage unit that the place always seems to be crowded? It seems like everyone’s got a storage unit.
Your observation is spot-on. Thanks to the resurgent U.S. economy, consumers have more buying power than they did just a few years ago during the recession. That means people are accumulating more things and they need somewhere to put their stuff.
Answer? Self-storage units.
“Self-storage is crazy growing,” said Brian Swan, manager of Coastal Mini Storage in Hampstead, N.C., recently told the Greater Wilmington Business Journal. “I pass three new facilities going up, just on my way to work every day.”
Swan’s facility, Coastal Mini Storage, gets an extra benefit from its location near the Atlantic Ocean. Swan has seen a huge rise in storage for boats.

ORANGE IS THE NEW PUBLIC – Public Storage, one of the biggest U.S. self-storage facility operates, has a spiffy new look.
Public Storage has spruced up the look and design of its new properties, while at the same time it’s given its signature orange logo a bit of a modern update. When new facilities open, they’ve got the sleek new look that Public Storage has designed for today.
“We decided what’s important, and eliminated what’s not, to maximize what matters to our customer,” said Karen Cormier-Southards, director of architecture and design at Public Storage.
The new design leans heavily on Public Storage’s trademark orange color scheme. Everything from rooflines to canopies are set in the Public Storage orange hue.

BIG BOYS MUSCLE IN ON MOM-AND-POP STORAGE FACILITIES –You’ve seen malls wither up and die, and you’ve seen big-box retail names like Toys “R” Us file for bankruptcy. It’s obviously a bad time to be in the retail business.
But there’s one segment of the commercial real estate industry that’s hot as fire—self-storage.
In fact, the sector is so attractive that the largest self-storage chains have been on a buying spree, buying up mom-and-pop self-storage facilities, according to Crain’s Detroit Business. CubeSmart, Life Storage, Extra Space Storage, National Storage Affiliates and Global Self Storage are some of the conglomerates that have gotten bigger through this strategy.

You’ve got a house or apartment full of chairs, sofas, bed and what-not but you’ve got to store it. You’ve secured a self-storage unit, so what do you do?

Throw it all the furniture into the unit, books piled on top of chairs slug next to boxes without any sort of plan? No, a thousand times no!

You have made an excellent decision to store your belongings in a well-secured self-storage unit. But that’s far from the end of your task. You need to develop a plan for how to store your items and organize them.

Otherwise, when you return to your self-storage unit in a few weeks to retrieve your possessions, you could find your treasured Scandinavian white-leather couch covered in mildew. (Especially if you opted for a unit in a facility that does not have climate-controlled units.) Or, maybe you won’t be able to find those Jimmy Choo pumps you swear you put in a box.

For starters, invest in some high-quality covers or bags for storing furniture. When it comes to covers, thick plastic may seem like the best solution. But some of your expensive living-room set pieces need to breathe. Instead of plastic, get some cotton covering, sheets or wraps.

Other types of sofas can be covered with plastic, however, especially if you cover the piece with enough openings to allow air to flow in and out.

Next, you need to buy some bubble wrap. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised. Remember the example of the guy who threw all of his furniture into the storage unit as fast as he could without a plan of what should go where? Well, that’s the not the only way your stuff could get dinged, chipped or outright broken.

Bubble wrap can help protect pieces in places where you didn’t even realize they were bumping up against each other. When it comes to storage units, always remember that you can never have enough bubble wrap.

Let’s not forget the labels. Buy an electronic label-maker if you wish, but a few stacks of plain-white adhesive labels and a couple of Sharpie markers works just as well. Get a handle of what exactly you want to be in easy reach and what’s not as important, then get to labelling. Make sure you don’t accidentally stick a label on the front of your new LCD flat-screen TV. Joking aside, this should be a fairly common-sense task for labelling what you have put in what box. And maybe you need to remind yourself that when you lift up a certain bookcase, that a certain shelf tends to slip out of its slats.

You will thank yourself in a few months for the helpful labelling when you come back and can easily find the scarves or jewelry or important tax documents that you stuffed in a box.
See that’s not so hard. And the little bit of time you’ve put into organizing your storage and protecting your furniture with the appropriate wraps and coverings will save you hours of frustration later.
 

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT—SELF STORAGE
Got a building that’s a big eyesore in your local community? We’re talking about buildings that are vacant and doing little except attract vermin and homeless people.
Try converting that building into a self-storage facility. That’s what U-Haul has done in Urbana, Ill., according to Inside Self Storage.
U-Haul International acquired a former shopping center that had been essentially sitting empty. U-Haul first converted some of the property into an office to rent its ubiquitous trucks and trailers, and portable storage containers, and to sell packing supplies.
Later, U-Haul converted the rest of the space into shiny, new self-storage units. The adaptive re-use of vacant facilities helps U-Haul meet its goal to support infill development and help communities lower their carbon footprints.
 
MARKET INVESTORS LOVE SELF-STORAGE
The market for commercial mortgage-backed securities has really taken it on the chin the past few months. After all, retailers like Macy’s, Sears, Wet Seal and Sports Authority have either closed stores by the dozen, filed for bankruptcy or simply shut down operations for good.
After all, in the era of Amazon, the bricks-and-mortar retail sector is about the last place you want to be.
So what’s a real estate investor to do? Self-storage facilities, as it turns out, are about the best place you can put your money right now if you want to invest in real estate.
Loans to self-storage facilities, according to SpareFoot, are performing extremely well—that means that the borrowers have plenty of cash flow to make monthly loan payments.
So if you’re looking for that next great investment idea, look no further than mortgage-backed securities that include plenty of self-storage facilities.
 
ON SALE NOW!
It’s a great time to reserve your self-storage unit in Texas. Rental rates in the Lone Star State have been flat for about four years and have remained essentially unchanged this year, according to Inside Self Storage.
Average monthly rates in various Texas cities range from a low of $84.64 in Fort Worth, to as much as $102.14 in Austin.

You’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of photos packed in boxes, stuffed in brittle photo albums, scattered loose in drawers in cabinets.

These photos are some of your most cherished possessions. You know that the way you’ve got them now is far from an ideal situation. But the worst part of the way you are handling them is where they are kept. You’ve got your photos scattered throughout your attic or tossed in your basement. That’s just asking for trouble—heat, humidity or freezing cold temperatures could all produce mold, mildew and water damage.

If you live in a part of the country that experiences extreme heat—think Phoenix or Las Vegas—or a place that has bone-chilling winters—people in Minnesota and the Dakotas know this first-hand—then you really need to spring into action.

You’d love to digitally scan all your photographs, but you don’t have time for that.

Here’s the easiest and fastest way to solve your photo dilemma—get yourself to your nearest climate-controlled self-storage unit.

Climate-controlled storage units really are not that much more expensive than standard units. A 10 foot-by-10 foot unit with climate control is typically about $140, which is about $50 more expensive than a unit without climate control. Prices can vary, based on the specific storage facility or region of the country.

After you’ve identified and reserved your storage facility, you’re ready for the process of packing.

First, buy some containers for packing the photos. While the climate control of the storage unit will provide one layer of protection, the storage containers give you an additional layer of protection against other elements that can damage your prints. Some of the best storage containers can protect your photos against things like acid, dust, dirt and even light.

If you want heavy-duty protection, look for containers that come with reinforced metal corners and have special coatings covering the exterior and laminate coatings on the interior. These containers, which are often described as “archival” or “museum-style” can be expensive. (The exact price depends on the size of the box, but expect to spend at least $10 per container). But they can be worth it for expensive photographs, such as pictures taken by a professional wedding photographer.

You’ll want to buy some sleeves or envelopes for the most fragile of your photos. These can come in plastic or paper. You may also want to buy what’s called archival buffered tissue paper for additional preservation and protection.

Of course, when you go to fetch the photos in a few weeks, months or even years, you’ll want to know where to find that picture of Aunt Martha or the photos from your bachelorette party. Buy plenty of self-adhesive white labels to use both on the storage containers, envelopes or dividers to use inside the containers. The future version of you will be glad that the present-day version of you did this.

So there you have it. This may seem like a chore at first, but you’ll definitely sleep better at night knowing that your photos are safely stored for what’s essentially the foreseeable future. And think about how much easier this would be than trying digitally scan every single one of those photos.

The negative affects of sleep deprivation reach far and wide, so stop trying to cram in extra sleep on the weekends—it’s not going to work!
But you could store a cot at your local storage facility no matter where you live…Los Angeles, Sacramento, Phoenix, or Fresno.  Check out SSF for your everyday deals and promotions.