Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
Christmas Day is drawing closer and by following these tips over the festive period you can celebrate without cluttering your home.
If you’ve bought a real Christmas tree, many local councils offer free recycling and will pick it up for you like they would on a normal refuse collection. You can save storage space all year round by easily disposing of them when Christmas is over.
Don’t use Christmas as an excuse to overload your home with a dancing snowman or a singing Santa. Adding decorations to every bit of free space in your home is a quick way to make it look crowded and cluttered. Try playing Christmas music instead to get in a festive mood.
Rather than having large decorations you could just tie a ribbon around everyday items such as door handles, banisters and potted plants. This will give a Christmas feel to your home at a small cost and won’t create a mess.
To find out how you can benefit from self storage over Christmas and New Year, visit www.bigyellow.co.uk/personal to get started.
Tags: big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, byss, christmas, christmas gifts, Christmas storage, clean, clutter, de-clutter, declutter, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, storage, storage solution, tips and tricks, UK storage
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Thursday, September 30th, 2010
Making use of the space under your bed is a great storage solution, it’s also an area which is often forgotten about. The area can be used for items that aren’t used regularly such as out of season clothes, shoes and bedding. Whether you have drawers or a raised bed, a little creativity and a few simple storage solutions can transform an empty area into an indispensible storage space.
One of the best storage solutions for underneath the bed is vacuum storage bags as they come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
They can be filled with sweaters, clothes and any other soft items, then by using a vacuum cleaner you can easily suck the air from the bags which reduces them to a compact storable size. The deflated bags can then stored underneath the bed and even stacked together to maximise the space you have available.
There are always more traditional storage containers such as clear plastic bins that can be used to store bulk items. They come in different sizes depending on the space you have available to use and can easily slide from beneath your bed.
For all of your storage needs including storage boxes and vacuum storage bags visit us in store or order online at our online box shop.
Tags: big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, boxes, business storage, byss, clean, clutter, collectibles, de-clutter, declutter, fine wine storage, furniture storage, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, Self Stroage, storage, storage solution, student, student storage, tips and tricks, UK storage, wine storage
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Wednesday, September 15th, 2010
Making tough decisions about what clothes to keep can be the hardest part of de-cluttering your wardrobe and many people are afraid that they might throw out something they’ll want in the future. As a result wardrobes can become your own personal indoor storage sheds which house all the old, off season and mismatched things you can’t bear to throw away. Indecision is what causes clutter to build-up and often leads people to hoarding clothes that they would no longer wear, but keep just in case.
Keeping all your clothing may seems to be the easiest option but if you can replace the thought of “I’ll get into this someday” with, “I’ll get new things when I lose weight” as an extra incentive and you’ll be on the right path.
Here’s some top tips on how to tackle the mountain in your wardrobe:
1. Start at the top of your wardrobe, pick a shelf and take out all of the items. Be hard on yourself because if you haven’t worn an item of clothing in over a year, it’s unlikely that you ever will in the future. If other items don’t fit you can give them away, donate to charity or keep in a self storage room.
2. When your wardrobe is empty, clean the shelves, walls and the floor to freshen up the area before you put sorted clothes back in. Once you have done that, start organising your clothes by everyday items, colour and by the length. If there are items that you wear more frequently than others you can place them in an area where it’s easily accessible for you.
3. For every new item of clothing that you add to your wardrobe, be sure to remove an old item so it won’t take up valuable space. It will also ensure that your wardrobe doesn’t get re-cluttered and stays manageable.
You can even maximise your wardrobe space by keeping your out of season items elsewhere and rotating them. We have wardrobe boxes that help to make storing clothes easy. To find out how you can benefit from storing your clothing in our self storage rooms at any of our stores, visit our Quote and Reserve Online page to get started.
Tags: big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, boxes, business storage, byss, clean, clutter, collectibles, de-clutter, declutter, furniture storage, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, Self Stroage, storage, storage solution, student storage, UK storage, wardrobe, wine storage
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Monday, May 3rd, 2010
The annual spring cleaning ritual is a great way to kick-start your health in many ways.
From a health perspective, a deep spring clean is the chance to get mold, dust and other harmful irritants out of your house. A great resource is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site for Healthy Homes.
Though it might sound crazy, cleaning can also be a great workout. Take the time to go through every room and tackle every mess. Lifting boxes, vacuuming, scrubbing the bathroom, it’s all calories burned and strength earned.
Financially, don’t forget that loose change! It’s money you can add to your savings, put toward paying off debt or use for immediate purchases. And while you’re at it, turn clutter into cash by holding a garage sale to empty the items from your ‘sell’ pile – or consider selling items online.
Finally, don’t forget that a tidy house is a tidy mind; A study from the National Institute of Mental Health last year reported that visual clutter was found to decrease short-term memory and lower attention span. With all of that out of the way, you’ll start to feel the benefits of a cleaner, simpler life all round.
Tags: Big Yellow Self Storage, clean, de-clutter, declutter, personal storage, self storage, storage, storage solution
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Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
In one of the most crowded countries in the world, space is a big issue. To put this into context, Japan is roughly the size of California, slightly larger than Great Britain, and only a little smaller than France. However, it has over double the population of the UK.
As such, innovation in storing everything from clothes to food is standard. Storage lockers are placed around the city, as are bike racks – and data storage is a large part of the country’s economy.
What can we learn from this though? Building small can be a sign of higher ambitions, and creating a small home can be an amazingly positive and creative act, one which can enhance life in surprising ways.
‘The Very Small Home’ by Azby Brown presents stunning design advances in Japan. Particular emphasis is given to what the author calls ‘the Big Idea’ – the overarching concept that does the most to make the house feel more spacious than it actually is. Among the Big Ideas introduced here are ingenious sources of natural light, well-thought-out atriums, snug but functional kitchens, unobtrusive partitions and free-flowing circulation paths.
This book puts the house designs in the context of lifestyle trends, and highlights their shared characteristics. For each project, the intentions of the designers and occupants are examined. The result is a very human sensibility that runs through the book. A glimpse of the dreams and aspirations that these unique homes represent and that belies their apparent modesty. The second half of the book is devoted to illustrating the special features in the homes, from clever storage and kitchen designs, to ingenious skylights and nooks.
Tags: bicycle storage, big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, boxes, business storage, clean, de-clutter, declutter, energy efficient, furniture storage, personal storage, self storage, solar energy, storage solution
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Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
The one thing you’ll inevitably need if you’re planning to set up your own business from home is a lot of space. With the help of commercial self storage, you can make this process a lot easier by storing papers and documents securely offsite.
It’s a great way to store documents safely, and also provides the opportunity to many to not only change the way they work – but also expand their businesses. Records are important and have to be maintained, but storing them requires a lot of space. Self storage allows you to keep your files organised in one location – that’s easy to sort through when needed.
This isn’t only relevant to smaller businesses either. Is your business expanding or simply overstocked? You could use a facility for space for equipment, promotional material or to archive documents.
What if you need to free up valuable office or work space for something else – or are simply renovating, relocating or decorating your business? The possibilities are endless, and well worth considering in both the long and short term.
Tags: big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, business storage, clean, containers, de-clutter, personal storage, self storage
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Thursday, April 8th, 2010
We all know what it’s like. You’ve had your phone for a while, it’s looking a bit tired – but more importantly, it’s acting it. There are a number of things you can do to fix this, and breathe new life into your handset before banishing it to the back of a drawer for good.
Sluggish performance on most phones is almost always caused by a lack of memory, itself caused by having too many apps on your phone. To delete some apps, go to the main menu and find your applications folder. Doing this will show you a list of all the apps installed on your phone. Tap on an entry and your phone will show you how much memory the app takes up, as well as giving you the option to delete it.
You can set single speed dial keys by holding down the key from the home screen, but for setting up a whole lot, go to the Options menu, select Phone Options and then Speed Dial Numbers. Here, you’ll see the whole alphabet, ready for you to assign.
Finally, using the wrong version of software on your phone can also slow it down. The process for this is different for each manufacturer, but if you call your operator – they’ll be able to talk you through how to update your phone, and delete the old version to save space!
Tags: Big Yellow Self Storage, boxes, business storage, clean, clutter, collectibles, de-clutter, declutter, furniture storage, mobile, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, spring, spring clean, storage, storage solution, student storage, UK storage, wine storage
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Monday, March 15th, 2010
The sun is finally here (almost), coats are getting lighter and the flowers are poking their heads out from under autumnal leaves and wintery ice. With this change in the air and Spring around the corner, a fresh start and a new look is on everyone’s minds – whether that’s a new haircut, new job or more often than not, some redecorating.
With this comes the long-awaited seasonal ritual – the packing away of the winter coats, boots, and sports equipment that are spilling out of closets and piling up in various corners of the home. Spring is a great time to get rid of all of the stuff that has been accumulating around the house. For some this may be just cleaning out the closet to accommodate for a warmer wardrobe, for others it is a time to really get down and dirty eliminating clutter and cleaning the whole house from top to bottom. Whichever way you do your spring cleaning, a cost efficient way to organise the leftover clutter is a storage room.
With Big Yellow Self Storage you can easily store your valuables while de-cluttering, redecorating to moving. You can store things of all shapes and sizes, with room sizes from 9 sq ft up to 400 sq ft. We employ state of the art customer service and technology in all our stores, boasting 24 hour digital CCTV monitored by staff round the clock. Each self storage room is protected by its own alarm while there’s also unique PIN entry access, well lit corridors and fire detection systems in all self storage locations with easy access 7 days a week. Visit our Quote & Reserve Online page for details on how we can give you a helping hand.
Over the next few month’s we’ll be bringing you the best tips, tricks and online resources to help you make the most of the spring clean season. Hit the subscribe button above to keep in the loop.
Tags: Big Yellow Self Storage, business storage, byss, clean, clutter, collectibles, de-clutter, declutter, furniture storage, music storage, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, spring, storage, storage solution, student storage, UK storage, wine storage
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