Connecticut Storage Topics

Getting My Winter Yard Supplies Out of the Way

Here in Connecticut, winter lawn and yard supplies can take up way too much room in the spring and summer if you let them. I mean, here you always have both a snow blower and a couple of shovels for snow. You've probably got lawn decorations for the winter holidays, too. And if you're lucky, you've got a couple bags of that sidewalk salt you bought on sale left, because that means it didn't snow too much over the winter.

When spring comes, the last thing you want is all that stuff out reminding you of what you've just endured, so you do what you can to get your winter supplies out of the way and to make room for the spring lawn care and gardening supplies.

Some people have an attic where they can keep their winter supplies, but I am not one of those people. Instead, I have to look for a solution away from home when it's time to store my stuff after the long northeastern winter. Since I don't have space at home for all those winter lawn care supplies and snow supplies, I actually store everything in a Bristol Self Storage unit.

Actually, I've kept a Bristol Self Storage unit at a place called US Storage Centers for a few years now, and I use it on something of a rotating schedule. In the spring, I move the snow blower and shovels and leftover salt in to the unit and get the rake and hoe and fertilizer out.  I also keep my mower and weed eater there in the winter. No sense in having them taking up space in the garage that's better used for the kids' sled or just some extra parking room in the winter time!

I've used this Bristol Self Storage unit for quite a while now, and it helps me keep my garage and home from getting overwhelmed with lawn and garden supplies. I mean, I can't imagine what my garage would look like if I had the winter and the summer stuff out at the same time! Yikes!

Luckily, because of my Bristol Self Storage unit, I haven't had to do much of that at all!

Read more: Gardening Equipment Storage - Bristol Self Storage, CT

Reasons Businesses Need Bristol Self Storage for Business Documents

As an organized person, I was told by many people years ago that I should start a professional organizing business. At first, I thought this was a crazy idea. After all, I was good at keeping my stuff organized, so why wouldn't other people just naturally get it, too? Well, the more I talked with other people, the more I found that being good at organizing things doesn't come naturally for most people. So, I decided to go ahead and try my organization business.

It's really taken off in the last year, and in that time, I've started working with more and more businesses who need extra help organizing their space to better suit the flow of their work and their own particular organizational needs.

One thing I've seen time and time again with businesses is that they simply don't have an effective place to put all their business documents. I mean, businesses have to store all sorts of paperwork for years and years – tax return information and bank information and employee information and customer information. It's really ludicrous how much is involved with the paperwork that goes into making a business run legally and well!

Anyway, for many businesses, I can find a better way to store at least some of their paperwork, but for others, the key is really just to get some of the business paperwork out of the way by putting it in storage. For this, I highly recommend the US Storage Centers Bristol Self Storage location. I have had nothing but good experiences with this location, and I certainly think it's a great option for many businesses who need paperwork storage.

Here are a few of the reasons that businesses need a Bristol Self Storage unit for their documents:

Clearing out a room

Sometimes I get calls from businesses who want to clear out one room of their office space. They can't afford a larger office space, but they need to convert a room into a break room or an office for a new employee. The problem is that this random room is usually the home of all the business documents they have to hang on to for years.

While I can often get most of the stuff out of said room by organizing the entire office and giving everything its own place, often times I have to recommend that the business store the least used paperwork in a Bristol Self Storage unit. I often recommend that they box up at least the old tax papers and other business documents that they probably won't need in the near future and haul them out of the office. That way, there's space left over for organizing the rest of the paperwork, and plenty of room in the area they're trying to clear out.

Long term storage

Sometimes, businesses just want to be better organized. One way that I do this is by getting rid of things that are rarely, if ever, used. You'd be amazed at what kinds of things businesses keep. (Ancient computers and dot matrix printers. Seriously.) One thing that businesses keep because they have to, though, is certain paperwork. The problem is that these documents take up valuable space that could be used for other ends.

Read more: Records Storage - Bristol Self Storage, CT

Bristol – Storing Our Heirloom Baby Furniture

When I found out I was pregnant with my first baby twenty-five years ago, my dad, who was an expert craftsman, decided to make all the furniture for my baby. I was so excited that my dad was going to make our classically styled nursery furniture, especially because I knew it would last for decades and would eventually be a gift I could pass on to my own daughter.

Once the furniture had been through two babies, it needed a bit of retouching, but it was still sturdy, solid, and safe. My husband and I talked about what to do with the furniture until our daughter was old enough to decide if she wanted to use it for her own babies someday. We didn't really have room in our small home – there was just enough space there to store the kids' off season clothes, holiday items, and a few odds and ends.

So, we decided to check out long-term storage options for the heirloom furniture. We needed an affordable long-term solution that we could easily work into our monthly budget. We also needed to make sure that our furniture would stay in beautiful shape. By this point, my father had passed away, and the baby furniture was one of the last beautiful reminders I had of who he was in my life and the lives of my children.

We looked around town, knowing we were most likely going to stay in Bristol for the rest of our lives. That's when we found US Storage Centers Bristol Self Storage. The location was great – just a few minutes from home. But since we weren't planning on accessing our furniture all that often, location wasn't what mattered the most. What really mattered were security, price, and the quality of the storage unit, since we wanted to make sure the pieces of furniture were protected as well as possible for many years to come.

The security was a no-brainer. The manager of the Bristol Self Storage location walked us through how security worked there, and it really was amazing. You had to have a key code to get back to your unit, and if you accessed the unit without first punching in your key code, your unit alarm would go off. It's not like there were lasers or any high tech stuff protecting the units, but we figured that this would be plenty of security.

The price couldn't be beaten, either. They even offered specials for long-term renters, since most of their renters were on a month to month contract. That was a great way to budget even better for the Bristol Self Storage unit.

Plus, the quality of the units was great. The whole facility looked neat and clean. The inside of the unit we saw didn't have water damage or rodent damage – things we'd seen at a couple of other storage places we looked at. We were really comfortable leaving our heirloom quality baby furniture here for a long term storage solution.

One other thing that really sold us on the US Storage Centers Bristol Self Storage location was that the manager seemed to really know what he was talking about when it came to storing furniture. The manager of the place gave us some great tips to help us protect our baby furniture while it was in storage.

Read more: Storing Furniture at Bristol Self Storage, CT

Garage Sale Shopping for My Babies

When you have twins, taking care of them on a daily basis is hard enough. Then, you have to worry about things like clothing two babies, having two baby swings, and stuff like that! Because my sister in law is a mother to twins, I knew all this stuff before my babies arrived, and as soon as I found out I was having multiples, I decided to start being proactive in providing for my babies.

I'm definitely not too proud to use used and hand me down items, so I knew one of the best ways to get the things I needed for my babies would be to shop at garage sales. In my area, you can find lots of garage sales, and it's easy to find cheap but good condition baby stuff if you know where and how to look. The problem was that we were going to be moving halfway through my pregnancy, and I wouldn't have any place to keep my garage sale finds until after we moved. That's why I checked out Bristol Self Storage locations and ended up settling on a place called US Storage Centers.

The Bristol Self Storage locations in our area seemed okay, but US Storage Centers really stood out for a few reasons. For one thing, it was cleaner and more well-kept than many of the other Bristol Self storage locations in the area. It made me more comfortable to leave things for my babies in storage there, because I knew they weren't likely to be damaged by water or rodents!

Another reason I liked the US Storage Centers Bristol Self Storage location was that it was very secure. With individually alarmed units and a gate you had to use a code to get into, it seemed like most thieves wouldn't even try to break into those units. Plus, the facility was very well lit, and there were cameras everywhere. Heck, the manager even lived on site, so people would probably just assume someone was home at all times!

Once I signed the month to month lease for my Bristol Self Storage unit, I started getting more serious about garage sale shopping for the twins. I would go to a sale or two just about every weekend. I learned that Craigslist garage sale listings are some of the best because people often list specifics about what they have available, which makes it easy to see which garage sales to hit up and which ones to skip.

Read more: Storing Baby Stuff in Bristol, CT