Self Storage Blog » personal storage

Big Yellow Self Storage Bike Challenge

Big Yellow Blogger — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 14:01:06 +0000

On the 19th of August at 7am four of our staff members will be taking on an amazing feat for charity. The Big Yellow Fellows (Mike FitzGerald (the team leader), Richard Shubrook, Paul Holmes and Luke McLaughlin) will, along with badminton coach Stephanie Cartwright, be riding 191 miles visting 34 Big Yellow Self Storage stores within the M25. All this is in aid of national charity Get The Kids Going!

Get Kids Going! works to enable disabled young people to get involved in all kinds of sports, anything from powerlifting to tennis. They’re currently preparing for the London paralympic games in 2012.

The company’s Chief Executive Officer, Jane Emmerson, loves the idea. “It’s absolutely fantastic to see what the Big Yellow Fellow boys are doing – they are certainly putting themselves to the test! We receive no funding from the Government or the Lottery and rely solely on donations from public so the money that Mike and the team raise will directly boost GB medal hopes at next year’s Paralympics helping to buy much needed equipment and sports grants.”

The Big Yellow Fellows endurance cycle is one of six Olympic events they’ll be recreating this year. This is all part of the Gold Challenge. This initiative challenges the public to take part in Olympic and Paralympic events to raise money for sports charities and promote sports among young people.

Good luck to everyone on the Big Yellow Fellows team!

If you’d like to get involved in the cause then you can visit their donation page. All contributions, no matter how small, will be greatly appreciated. (If they reach £1000 then Mike will be having a leg wax. Just a little extra incentive for you there).

Did You Know that keeping a clean house can reduce your allergy symptoms?

Big Yellow Blogger — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:43:49 +0000

Did you know that you can control and even reduce your allergy symptoms just by having a clean house? There are an estimated 5.1 million people in the UK that suffer from asthma which is most commonly triggered by an allergy to the house dust mite which reside in the buildup of dust in your home.

In order to illuminate these, use allergy proof covers on cushions and bed linen or replace all carpets and rugs with wooden floorings. A simple and less expensive solution is to clean using a damp or static-charge cloth so that dust is not just stirred but removed completely-doing this regularly will minimise the opportunity for dust to gather in your home. Do away with large unwanted furniture and air rooms when cleaning to reduce the humidity of the room preventing damp and mold growth by decreasing the number of pollutants in the air.

Visit www.bigyellow.co.uk to find out more about how self storage can help reduce your allergy symptoms.

Stay Motivated While De-Cluttering

Big Yellow Blogger — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:39:55 +0000

Just like cleaning the bathroom – isn’t there always something else that’s more important to do rather than de-cluttering? As you squeeze another t-shirt into your already stuffed drawers, why not take the plunge and seriously deal with your personal storage?

Keep yourself entertained – Turn on your favourite tracks, switch on the radio and get busy with clearing up. Tackle the floor and surfaces first, then open up some cupboards and do a proper review. Starting with clothes in the bedroom should be easy… Just remember the six-month rule! You can keep special items with real, sentimental value in self storage units, see www.bigyellow.co.uk/personal.

Grab a regular cuppa – After the initial blitz, make yourself a cup of tea. Looking around with fresh eyes can often make all the difference. Personal storage at Big Yellow is ideal for all those things that you simply can’t bring yourself to throw away. Like your Mum’s old china? If you’re not using it for tea and cake, donate it to Charity or put it in storage for your own children.

Get your friends involved – to help and to donate to. Everyone knows that ‘Many hands make light work’. You’ll find that the things stored and cluttering up your rooms may be real treasures to someone else, and you can have a good catch up at the same time.

Change rooms regularly – by switching from room to room you can keep busy and cover the whole house. The home office can be the most difficult job. Visit www.bigyellow.co.uk as we can help with personal and business storage needs.

De-cluttering isn’t easy, but if you can keep your precious items safe in Big Yellow storage, there is real satisfaction and positivity created in having clean lines and empty surfaces in the home.

Image via shino 誌野 on Flickr

All hands on deck: cleaning with kids

Big Yellow Blogger — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:03:20 +0000

Every parent has the same problem with young children getting sick of their toys, or simply growing out of them. The problem is that the house ends covered in toys rendered useless, and simply gathering dust. If this sounds familiar, and you cannot bear to just throw these expensive toys away then Big Yellow Self Storage are here to help.

We offer units in a range of sizes, starting from just ten square foot, so if you plan to have more children you can store these toys for them, instead of shelling out more money in the future. As well as saving you money, this can also help to reduce dust which clutter, such as toys, tends to gather.

Cleaning your home can become quite a chore when you have to do it on your own. Working with other people to clean and organise your home makes the bain of your life suddenly become a more manageable task, and with a few minutes of planning also a great family activity.

While children are on holiday for the summer, getting them to help with fun cleaning games, such as using sock puppets to make dusting fun. You could also incorporate cleaning into play by allocating time to create the sock puppets before the cleaning begins.

Racing is another engaging way to get family members on board. For this you will need to plan and prepare- set a task, establish your expectations and introduce any rewards and forfeits before the game begins so that everyone involved knows the rules and plays by them. A great example of this is to set the task of collecting 5 items from one room each and racing to be the first to put them back in their rightful place. Within 10 minutes the whole room will be clean. You could also incorporate relay style races and team races to vary the games week by week.

Musical cleaning is an excellent way to make chores entertaining and enjoyable. Create a circuit or running order of chores and establish individual starting points for each participant. Begin the music and explain that when the track changes you move on to the next chore.

A combined effort not only allows cleaning to be completed more quickly but it also means that you have combined two of what should be daily tasks into one. Keep checking back to our Big Yellow Blog for more tips and tricks on cleaning and de cluttering during the summer months. For self storage solutions that match all your needs, check out http://www.bigyellow.co.uk/personal.

Sock puppet via Pinprick on flickr

Did You Know – the average person makes £150 online?

Big Yellow Blogger — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:11:28 +0000

Whether it’s things that you no longer need, can’t fit into or gifts you can’t return, online auctions are a great way to earn money from the comfort of your own home.

You can earn anything from a few pounds to hundreds of thousands, depending on how much you have to sell. Platinum power sellers on eBay for example, make sales of over £15,000 every month. To shift that much stock however, you would need a serious amount of personal storage space!

Vintage items and used designer brands in good condition are always in demand. Auction on eBay and you could have the money within a few days. It’s not only on eBay that you can sell your wares. If it has a bar code then Amazon is a good bet – especially books.

Another quick win would be to get cash back for your phone. If you’ve recently upgraded your mobile phone, sell it online or recycle it and get cash back. Iphones are valued highly, but can alternatively be put in storage and sold as vintage in a decade or so.

For more ideas on how storage can help your cash flow please visit www.bigyellow.co.uk

Tips and Tricks: Storage for Student Clutter

Big Yellow Blogger — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:52:02 +0000

It only seems like yesterday that your children left for their first term of the year for university, but it’s already that time again when they are bringing back all the clutter they initially took with them.
For those who have finished their degrees completely, most parents will be dreading the returning clutter, which may have doubled in size over the past three years with added University books, notes, sports equipment, DVDs and household items. When your family home is already short of space, this can be a frightening thought for most parents. If you are one of these parents, fret not, as Big Yellow Self Storage is here to help.

Big Yellow’s rooms are available in a range of sizes, access to which is available seven days a week. If you are unsure how long you will need self storage for, you can rent a room for as little as seven days, or as long as you may need.

It is even possible to down or upgrade your room size whenever required, so you could even rent a room whilst you sort out what to do with the clutter, and whether or not your children are set to go back to University in September, we have terms which are adept to anyone’s Self Storage needs.

If your children are worried about you having access to their belongings, you can reassure them with the fact that the space is locked with their own padlocks, so, if desired, only they have access to their prized possessions.

Big Yellow Self Storage realize that moving and packing can be one of the most stressful things to deal with, especially with young adults eager to hold on to memories of their University life. However, we are here to make the process as manageable as possible. We even deliver boxes to your home, ready for packing.
If you can identify with any of the above please visit www.bigyellow.co.uk to get a personalized quote and find out more about how you can use Self Storage units to eliminate your childs’ hoarding tendencies.

Six Months And You’re Out!

Big Yellow Blogger — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:05:31 +0000

It’s now that time of the year, when you begin to realise that those January Sale purchases were unnecessary and you need to decide what needs to go. Using self storage is a useful solution for those items you don’t want to throw away but you can’t find a home for. In order to help you decide what should stay and what should go, follow this simple rule – six months and you’re out!

This golden rule can be used when managing other areas of the home, whether you’re updating your wardrobe, clearing the garage, emptying the garden shed or even moving your office. However, getting rid of some objects may be harder than you imagined and thankfully for those things that really have to stay there are other options. Consider storing items in a secure environment away from the home or multi-functional furniture that may provide not only storage compartments for those precious items but also additional seating.

The majority of our unused items tend to get stored on the unreachable shelves or in the dark corners of the house we steer clear of, knowing what mess lies there. It is these areas that should be targeted first when de-cluttering your home and organising your life. Ask yourself, when was the last time you used the item? If it has been longer than six months then the chances are you won’t be needing it any time soon.

Tackle the clutter in a systematic way, working from one room to the next and keep high traffic areas of your home clear of clutter. This ensures that you will be able to monitor your progress and if a break is needed, you can come back to the same point. It is advised that in order to successfully complete the task of de-cluttering your home, a full day is taken but with busy lives getting busier and time getting shorter, this is not always an option.

To find out how you can benefit from self storage, visit our Quote and Reserve Online page to get started.

Tips And Tricks: Prepare For Company

Big Yellow Blogger — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 11:15:22 +0000

De-cluttering your home should not just be a one off occurance. Being able to welcome visitors into a tidy home fulfills a home-owners sense of pride and allows visitors, both planned and spontaneous to enter into a calm and social sanctuary.

Regularly completing simple tasks such as sorting through mail, wiping services and making your bed as well as hoovering and dusting on a weekly basis enables you to keep on top of the clutter eliminating the need for a one day a year hardcore clear out.

The most important area to tackle when preparing your home for spontaneous visitors is the bathroom. The next is the lounge, vacuuming will make a dramatic improvement on the appearance of your home.

Wipe your kitchen surfaces, discarding any crumbs you may have picked up into the sink and rinse. Don’t spoil your hard work by wiping them onto the floor. Finally, pile up any papers or magazines in one pile. Although they may not be in their rightful home, piling them up will make it look as though they’ve been there for years.

These simple ideas can be completed within half an hour’s notice but making time to do these few things before you leave the house in the morning will allow you to return home to a stress-free environment with whatever company you may chose.

Tips And Tricks: Decluttering Your Online Life

Big Yellow Blogger — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:01:20 +0000

Decluttering your home is extremely useful but it only works if you go the whole way and don’t miss out the small yet often highly stressful areas of your life. Here are three handy ways you can de-clutter your online life.

If you spend a lot of time on social networks you can be forever inundated with notifications and requests. Using Tweetdeck is the simplest way to monitor and manage your online social activites. Tweetdeck allows users to collect their Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIN, Myspace and Google Buzz updates all in one place. To reduce the amount of online clutter users can even opt out of recieving specific updates making this customisable application perfect for your needs.

Instapaper is a personalised online article storage system. By simply installing a “Read Later” bookmark, once signed up, users of Instapaper can save multiple articles in one place which can be accessed at a later date. Gone are the days when you spend 3 hours of your afternoon browsing the web and its many stories, eventually forgetting the original location you began your search.

Armadillo Self Storage Supports Life For A Kid

Big Yellow Blogger — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:15:03 +0000

Our Armadillo Hull store has come to the aid of local charity ‘Life For A Kid’ which was formed earlier this year. Their goal is to make a difference to the lives of young children in the area with critical illnesses and disabilities. The charity founder, Dean Hoggard, is from the area and is working with the Great Britain ALL STARS who are a team of ex-Rugby League internationals.

A small charity shop has opened to raise extra money and we’ve been able to donate one of our storage rooms to help the cause. The Great Britain ALL STARS travel the nation playing charity matches in front of thousands of rugby league fans and the whole team in Hull are very proud to be part of a great local charity.