Tennessee Storage Topics

Finding Storage Space for My Son's Lawn Care Business

I've always made it my goal to raise entrepreneurial, creative children. My kids were starting lemonade stands and selling Girl Scout cookies just as soon as they were old enough to understand a little bit about giving people goods and services in exchange for money. Well, that entrepreneurial spirit has really taken off in my seventeen year old son who started his own lawn care business this summer.

So far, he has enough customers lined up to keep him quite busy throughout the summer. My husband and I loaned him the money he needed to buy a mower and trimmer for his jobs, and he's already got a truck he can drive between his customers' homes. The one thing that we were struggling to find this spring was a place for him to keep all of his lawn care supplies, since there really isn't room in our shared family garage.

We looked into a few different options, and we finally settled on a place called US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage. We got the Murfreesboro Self Storage unit just before my son got out of school and was ready to start his lawn care business full time. Until that point, he had just been doing a couple of yards on the weekends with our own mower. But once we found the perfect storage solution for his business supplies, we were able to get him his own mower and trimmer. By the end of June, he thinks he'll be able to have us paid back, and the money he makes from there on out will be pure profit!

As investors in my son's business, we had a bit of say in where he chose to get his storage for his business for the summer. We helped him choose the US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage location for a few different reasons. One major factor was definitely the cost. We didn't want him signing up for a larger storage lease than he would be able to handle on his expected business income, and with US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage location, he didn't have to. He was able to get a reasonably sized storage unit without paying a fortune for it.

But we've taught our son well, and he didn't want to just take into account the actual cost of the storage unit. He also wanted to account for the value he was getting for his money. See, the actual cheapest self storage location in town had nothing by way of security except for the shabby locks on the individual storage units. My son wanted a little more than that for his hard-earned mowing equipment, so that's another reason he chose the US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage location – they offered a good security system for the money he was paying to use the storage unit.

Read more: Gardening Equipment Storage - Murfreesboro Self Storage

A Great Solution for Business Tax Files

Something that you don't realize until you have your own business is just how much space files and paperwork can take up. It's really pretty ridiculous! Because you have to keep so much paperwork as a business owner, it can take up tons of your office or business space. I mean, we're talking about reams of paper just for your tax files, which you're required to keep for at least seven years just in case the IRS comes knocking!

So for our business, we actually decided that it would be in our best interests to take all those business tax files off site for storage, and we store them at a place called US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage. The Murfreesboro Self Storage location is perfect – right near our business – and they have lots of other things going for them, too, including flexible unit sizes, good prices, good security, and excellent customer service. Here are some of the reasons we decided to store our tax files with this particular Murfreesboro Self Storage location:

Flexible Sizes

One thing that US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage definitely has going for it is various unit sizes. At some storage places, you only have a couple of options, but here, you get more choices. That's good because it means you can find the spot where your needs and budget are both satisfied. For our business, this is a mid-sized unit, which fits neatly into the monthly business budget but which also leaves us plenty of room for several filing cabinets' worth of paperwork and business documents.

Good Prices

The prices of this Murfreesboro Self Storage location are quite competitive, and you get good value for your money. While you may not be paying absolute rock bottom prices, you're paying for solid facilities that are in great condition, well-kept units, and a good security system. To us, that means we get more value for our money, rather than just paying a little bit less but getting way fewer features or lower-quality storage.

Good Security

The security of our Murfreesboro Self Storage unit was pretty important when we were choosing it. A few employees of the business would have the necessary information – gate code and combination for the lock – to get into the unit whenever we needed them to, but we didn't want all the employees to be able to access those old tax files and other documents freely. That, in fact, is part of the reason why we now store them off site.

At any rate, the US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage location is great because you have to have a gate code to disarm the alarm on the unit. Without that code, you'll set off the alarm when you open the unit. It's a pretty basic security system, but it definitely works to deter thieves – such as potential disgruntled employees – from accessing our business records!

Excellent Customer Service

We try to provide excellent customer service to our own customers, so it's important that we get excellent customer service from all the vendors with whom we work. That's definitely one thing we get with the US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage location. The manager there is always helpful and always takes care of problems promptly. It's nice to get such great service from someplace like your self storage location, for sure!

Read more: Records Storage - Murfreesboro Self Storage

Murfreesboro – Keeping My Apartment Furniture in Storage During a Summer at Home

When I decided to come to Middle Tennessee University in Murfreesboro, I knew I'd end up being a long way from home. It's a fifteen hour drive just to get home! That means that when I go home, I don't take a whole lot with me. I take the essentials, and that's about it. My college apartment doesn’t require me to keep the lease during the summer months, so during my first summer at home, I decided to get a Murfreesboro Self Storage unit to keep all my apartment furniture in while I went home.

That first summer, I spent a few days looking at different Murfreesboro Self Storage options, and then I came across US Storage Centers and found the perfect combination of features and price. It had low prices, but it also had excellent security and customer service. The Murfreesboro Self Storage location also offered several different sizes of self storage units, which meant that I could choose the exact perfect size for what I needed while I went home for the summer.

The other excellent thing about the US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage location was that they offered a month to month lease contract. That meant that I didn't have to worry about signing a six month lease or anything. That would have been too long for the few months I needed storage while I was gone, and the month to month lease option meant that if I needed to pay for one extra month to unpack my stuff when I got back from school, I could. It also meant that if I decided at the last minute to come back for second summer term, I'd be able to get my stuff out of storage and close down the lease.

It was a great option for me, and I've used it for two summers now. Each summer, I'll just go in near the end of the spring semester, pay for the self storage unit, and pack it full of apartment furniture. I load up my car with the rest of my belongings to head home. When I get back to school, I get everything out of my Murfreesboro Self Storage unit and put it back in my apartment. It's as easy as that!

Over the past couple of summers, I've picked up a few furniture storage tips that help me get more furniture into less space and keep my furniture in the best possible shape. I'll share them with you here:

First, make sure you get the right unit size. The goal is to make sure you aren't paying for a ton of extra space, but also that you can leave a bit of room between pieces of furniture to make it easier to pack and unpack the unit. Also, you can conserve space by breaking down things like the dining room table and by putting couches, sofas, and mattresses on end.

Second, make sure you put down a false floor of wood or shipping pallets. A false floor keeps your furniture up off the floor of the unit, which can become damp just because it's concrete. Now I even lay a sheet of plastic over the false floor for even more protection from potential water damage.

Read more: Storing Furniture at Murfreesboro Self Storage

Cleaning Out the Nursery

Like many couples who have an extra bedroom in their home, we had filled ours with stuff. It wasn't the "junk room" per se, but it was full of things we rarely used. We called it the guest room because there was a twin bed in there, but, seriously, no one ever slept there! So when we got pregnant with our second baby, we decided that we needed to clean out that room ASAP so it could become the nursery.

The problem, of course, was that all that stuff in the third bedroom was there because we didn't seem to have anywhere else to put it! There clearly wasn't any room in our garage or our attic for that stuff, and that was precisely why it ended up in that particular room to begin with. That's why we ended up getting a Murfreesboro Self Storage unit at a place called US Storage Centers.

We looked around a bit before deciding on US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage, but we ended up choosing it for a few reasons. For one thing, the prices were great. Plus, they had a discount for the first couple months of rental that would save us even more money. Add that to the fact that we could pay our bill online instead of having to remember to mail or drop off a check every month, and you've got a winner.

Also, though, the Murfreesboro Self Storage center had great security. We didn't have a ton of valuable stuff stored in that third bedroom, but, still there was some stuff of a bit of personal value – plus a few pieces of personal paperwork that it would not due to have stolen or destroyed! The manager of the US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self Storage location let us know that each unit had an individual alarm and that we would have to make a gate code to even get back to our unit in the first place. Those two things made us feel a lot better about leaving the contents of the third bedroom at that Murfreesboro Self Storage location.

Another reason we were drawn to the US Storage Centers Murfreesboro Self storage location was that it was well lit and clean, and there were cameras everywhere – another one of those security things. The center was very nice looking, and that also made us feel more comfortable about leaving our things there.

Once we rented our Murfreesboro Self Storage unit, it was easy to unload the contents of the third bedroom into it. We were actually surprised by how much room we had left over in the unit. We stacked it floor to ceiling and ended up having a bit of floor space left over. That was great because it let us move some stuff out of our garage that had been getting in the way, too.

Read more: Storing Baby Stuff in Murfreesboro