Fresno Self Storage Topics

Gardening Equipment Storage - Fresno Self Storage

Finding Room for My Gardening Supplies

I've always wanted to have a great apartment garden since I've lived in Fresno. My apartment has a little balcony area, and I did tons of reading before I turned it into my little oasis in the city. Now, I use pallets to plant my garden vertically, and I have a space filled with green and color – and even some good things to eat because I grow some of my own vegetables and herbs!

While having an apartment garden is fantastic in a lot of ways, it's also kind of problematic for me. The one thing you don't think about, I think, when planning a garden for a very small space is just how you're going to keep all your gardening supplies in that small space. Since I have a small apartment, I don't have a garden shed or any sort of storage space for my gardening supplies.

So when I first encountered this problem with my gardening, I looked into all sorts of possible options that would let me store my gardening supplies in my apartment or somewhere else. I even checked out benches that would double as garden supply storage, but they weren't really large enough for my gardening supplies – plus they took up tons of valuable room on my balcony garden!

What I ended up doing instead of trying to store my gardening supplies at home was to find space for them somewhere else – in a Fresno Self Storage unit. My Fresno Self Storage unit with US Storage Centers has been a surprisingly simple and affordable way for me to find space for my gardening supplies (and a few other odds and ends that were cluttering up my apartment and crowding my closets!).

Finding the Storage Space

When I first thought about using a Fresno Self Storage unit for my gardening supplies, I was pretty skeptical. I mean, who rents a storage unit just for gardening supplies, right? Well, I decided to check out different storage options, anyway, and I was really surprised by what I found. The units at US Storage Centers were surprisingly affordable, and they would make for a really easy way to store my gardening supplies where they would be out of the way, yet still accessible.

When I talked with the manager about what I needed, she immediately suggested that one of their smallest units would probably be just find for my needs. Gotta love the sort of place that doesn’t try to upsell you just for their own bottom line! At US Storage Centers Fresno Self Storage location, I never had to worry about that. The smallest unit was, in fact, exactly perfect for my needs.

The price of the smallest unit available was really affordable. I mean, in my quest to have a great apartment garden in Fresno, I had actually even considered renting a larger apartment that would have some outdoor storage space of its own. But the small unit from the Fresno Self Storage location was way cheaper than that, and it meant I didn't have to move from the apartment that I really did like!

Records Storage - Fresno Self Storage

Organizing the Family Paperwork in Fresno Self Storage

As a stay at home mom, I have the responsibility of being the manager of my home in more ways than one. Not only do I take care of all the meals and the cleaning and such, but I also run our household financially. Of course, my husband brings home the bacon, but I make sure that every dollar is accounted for and that all of our financial paperwork is taken care of for tax season. Even though I'm a bit of a penny pincher, I've found in the last few years that one of my favorite splurges is a Fresno Self Storage unit where I can keep all our financial paperwork, along with family mementos and other papers I want to save.

I came across the idea of using an off site Fresno Self Storage unit for our family's financial paperwork when I was talking to a friend who is a CPA. She was telling me how difficult it can be to do certain tax paperwork for families because they just aren't organized enough to get all the paperwork together. Seriously, some families take months to get all their tax paperwork together, and lots of times it's simply because they don't have enough room to keep everything organized.

Well, I was familiar with not having enough room! Our house was pretty small for a family of five, and we just didn't have the extra space to dedicate to keeping our paperwork stored with a good filing system. I usually just resorted to tossing it all in a box until tax season, when it would take hours of sorting to get everything we needed to get our taxes filed!

When I was talking to my CPA friend about this problem, she said we should check into off site storage for our paperwork through someplace like US Storage Centers Fresno Self Storage. She actually used the Fresno Self Storage location to keep her business paperwork in, so she said that they would probably be a great option for storing our family papers and stuff. I checked them out the very next day, and I was pleasantly surprised at their low prices! We were able to get a small closet-sized unit without breaking the bank, and it made all the difference in the world as far as keeping our space and paperwork organized.

I'd never been able to find space for multiple file cabinets before, but with the Fresno Self Storage unit, I had plenty of room in which to store the paperwork I needed to keep from year to year. I was able to designate a file drawer for past taxes that we were still keeping, even, which was unheard of! (I would usually destroy them precipitously in order to not have to deal with storing them, which, I know, isn't a great idea!)

Storing Furniture at Fresno Self Storage

Fresno Self Storage - Finding a Place for My Mom's Old Furniture

Moving a parent out of the old family home and into assisted living isn't an easy decision. It took my sister and I months of debate and research before we decided to do this with my mom. But once she broke her hip, we really just didn't have a choice. We picked out a great assisted living home for her to live in with her own mini apartment and everything, and we got her all moved in. But then we were stuck trying to figure out what to do with the old house and everything in it.

It took us weeks to sort through all the things in mom's house, but once we did, we ended up storing much to the furniture in a Fresno Self Storage location called US Storage Centers. Why did we decide to store most of the furniture, you might ask? Well, for a few different reasons.

For one thing, there were some pieces of furniture that our dad had made that we wanted to be able to use in our own homes eventually. We just didn't have room for those pieces at that very moment, so we wanted to put them in storage until we did. Also, we wanted to sell some of the furniture so that mom could have the money, but we knew it would take time and effort to get what some of the antique pieces were worth. But we needed to get the furniture out of the house as soon as possible because we already had people looking to buy it!

It was an emotional time, and it was so nice to have our Fresno Self Storage unit so that we didn't have to feel rushed into making rash decisions with some pieces that could be family heirlooms. The manager of the US Storage Centers Fresno Self Storage location was so kind and understanding about our situation, and he even gave us some great tips for storing our furniture more compactly and securely:

Choose the right unit: Lots of people think they need more storage space than they actually do, but if they break down furniture and pack things right, they'll actually get more bang for their buck. We avoided paying for extra space we didn't need by talking to our Fresno Self Storage location manager, who was able to help us figure out how best to store my mom's furniture so that the pieces would stay in good shape but so that we wouldn't be paying for space we didn't need.
Put like next to like: If you're dealing with furniture with different stains or brightly colored upholstery, sometimes long term storage can cause the colors of one piece of furniture to rub off onto another piece of furniture. With my parents' furnishings, we had to make sure to pack the white-painted pieces from the kitchen away from the stained pieces of the dining room. You can also solve this problem by wrapping individual pieces in cotton cloth to keep pieces from touching.

Storing Baby Stuff in Fresno

Making Room for Our Baby

When we got pregnant, we knew we weren't going to be able to move into a larger place until about a year after the baby was born. There was enough room for a small nursery in our two bedroom apartment, but the extra room was already taken up by a combination of office furniture and storage for our random odds and ends. Most of the things in the second room were things we needed to keep for the future, but we didn't have room for both them and the baby at that particular time. So, we decided to check out Fresno Self Storage units to see if we could find an affordable solution that would help us make room for our baby.

We looked around at a couple of different storage locations, but we ended up settling on US Storage Centers Fresno Self Storage location for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the location was close to home, which was nice. Even though most of the things we would put in storage were things we wouldn't need often, anyway, it was nice to be able to access them if we did need them. For instance, we kept copies of old tax records there, and having them at the storage unit meant we didn't have to trek across town to get them when we needed financial information for one reason or another.

Another reason we chose the Fresno Self Storage unit by US Storage Centers was that it was easy to access. We could get in any time night or day, practically, with our gate code. Even though it was easy for us to access, though, it wasn't easy for potential criminals to get into. The gate codes and individually alarmed units made it silly to try to break into the units there. Plus, the entire facility was well lit and protected by cameras, which meant we didn't need to worry too much about people even trying to break into our storage unit.

Of course, with a baby on the way, we were concerned about finances, as well. That meant we were looking for a good deal on our Fresno Self Storage unit. The US Storage Centers Fresno Self Storage location had some of the best prices in town to begin with, and then they had discounts available for the first few months' worth of rental on top of that. This meant we could definitely afford the storage unit for a year or so, and we wouldn't have to worry too much about fitting it into our budget.

Sports & Storage - Fresno

My Family's Tailgating Stuff

In my family, tailgating for every possible sporting event has always been just something that we do. We'll get together before football games, like people traditionally do, but we'll even have tailgating parties before spring baseball games. If there's a team playing that we like watching, whether they're the local high school football team or our favorite pro football team, we'll throw a tailgating party. It might seem a little crazy, but it's just something that we do. Since the whole extended family does the tailgating thing, we all share a Fresno Self Storage unit at a place called US Storage Centers. Our Fresno Self Storage unit lets us keep all the shared tailgating stuff together, so everyone can get to it and no one has to worry about it overtaking their own garage or house.

How much tailgating gear could you possibly have or need, you might ask? Well, since we take this so seriously, there's a lot of gear! We have a couple of canopies that we put up on hot Saturdays and Sundays so the women and kids can have some shade. We also have several huge coolers that we fill with food and drinks for all, with every family taking turns to pitch in something different each week. Plus, we have a few portable grills that we use just for tailgating, although sometimes we'll also get into the Fresno Self Storage unit and get those out for camping trips, as well. That's not even to mention all the chairs and even a couple of portable hammocks that we store along with our tailgating gear so that we have comfortable places to eat and drink and relax during a tailgating party!

At any rate, when you're talking about throwing regular tailgating parties for an extended family, you're talking about a lot of gear. That's why we rely on our Fresno Self Storage unit to help us keep all the gear together and organized – as well as out of the way.

Our first goal in choosing a Fresno Self Storage unit was to make sure that everyone who needed access to the unit would have access to it. That was easy with US Storage Centers. It's pretty centrally located to most of our family members; those who live further out of town weren't going to live near the storage unit, anyway! Plus, we can just share the gate code and combination lock code with whoever needs to get into the storage unit, and it's easy for them to access it whenever they need to borrow some of the shared family gear. Whenever we're getting ready for a real tailgating party, we'll all head over to the storage unit to grab pretty much everything that's in there for the party.