Friday, August 12th, 2011
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).
Tags: big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, boxes, byss, clutter, de-clutter, declutter, News, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, Self Storage UK, storage solution, student storage, UK storage, Yellow Fellows
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Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011
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
Tags: armadillo self storage, at home, big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, book storage, boxes, byss, clean, clutter, de-clutter, declutter, home, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, Self Storage UK, tips and tricks, UK storage
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Monday, July 25th, 2011
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
Tags: big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, boxes, byss, childhood memories, clean, clutter, de-clutter, declutter, family clutter, home, kids, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, Self Storage UK, storage, storage solution, tips and tricks, UK storage
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Thursday, July 7th, 2011
One in four people are affected by allergies at some point in their life, and dust mites cause the most common allergy. Keeping your home clutter free with good personal storage is essential to improving your living environment and reducing allergies.
Choose wooden floors and boxes – Children with eczema are particularly vulnerable to dust mites. 80% of asthma sufferers react to them too. Try keeping bedrooms tidy, just putting things away is a start. Toys should be stored away to stop them getting dusty. Storage in good quality, sturdy boxes that are made from recycled material will help keep toys in good condition. Replacing carpets with hard wood flooring can make rooms easier to keep clean and also reduce allergies.
Keep toys away from the mattress -Your bed is the main dust mite zone. The average mattress contains over100,000 dust mites. The warm, moist environment is haven for the mites who can lay up to 50 eggs every three weeks. Wash bed linen at 60 degrees and tumble dry soft toys before putting them in storage away from the bed.
Embrace a minimalist house – By keeping furnishings to a minimum, you reduce the number of surfaces dust mites can land on. Visit bigyellow.co.uk/personal for help in storing old furniture or items you just can’t throw away. Avoid stacks of newspapers or books in open cupboards as these attract the dust. Using a static duster can also help by picking up dust while you clean.
Store old clothes away – Excess clothing in the bedroom can be a real dust trap. Only keep the clothes that you wear regularly and store the rest in zip locked bags. In this way, you can refresh your wardrobe seasonally, reduce clutter in your home, and help control the prevalence of dust mites. Personal self storage at Big Yellow can help for short and long term storage to suit your individual needs.
You can buy good quality storage boxes for all your needs online from the Big Yellow Box Shop at https://www.bigyellow.co.uk/boxshop/ 
Tags: allergies, allergy, big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, clean, clothes, clutter, declutter, storage solution, tips and tricks, toys, UK storage
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Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
Kirsty from Big Yellow Self Storage together with Trina and Kirstie from our Armadillo Stores watched UK medal hopefuls in action during a tour of the English Institute of Sport (EIS) in Sheffield.
The impressive lottery funded facility is big enough to cater for a wide variety of sports and features state of the art equipment. As well as being a tremendous asset for elite athletes, the Institute works on projects to bring sport into the community.
There were several presentations from the organizers of Team 2012, which gave an insight into the funding operation. The goal is to raise £25 million and £14 million has already been raised. The money raised will help fund equipment for over 1200 athletes across 47 sports.
Our Big Yellow and Armadillo staff were told about two key projects the Institute is promoting: table tennis and boxing. The Institute is funding a table tennis coach from world leaders China. Kirsty from Big Yellow got to see the coach in action and even play a game against medal hopeful Kelly Sibley.
Inside the boxing halls, they saw Natasha Jonas, reigning European champion, together with Luke Campbell and Anthony Ogogo practicing their style and technique. Boxing is a very well funded and popular sport. As part of the outreach project, mobile boxing rings are being used in communities with impressive results.
The day was a fantastic insight into the development of English sporting talent and a great way of seeing the Big Yellow sponsorship of Team 2012 in action. To find out more about our medal hopefuls and work at the Institute please visit their website.
Tags: armadillo self storage, big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, Boxing, business storage, Charity, Olympics, Paralympics, self storage, self storage blog, Table Tennis, Team 2012, UK storage
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Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
We’re proud to have achieved a position in The Sunday Times Green List, which awards the top 60 UK companies who act in the most environmentally responsible manner.
The “Best Green Companies” listing, now in its fourth year, has become the standard against which companies can measure their environmental performance and they must also demonstrate that their employees are engaged and committed to protecting the environment.
Big Yellow was the only self storage company to appear in the list as we’ve always operated in a responsible way by investing in green buildings and operations. Over one third of our stores have onsite renewable technology such as solar panel roofs which has increased our renewable energy generation by 11.5% in the past year alone.
Other ‘green’ initiatives such as motion sensor lighting, rain water harvesting and green roof insulation also feature in some Big Yellow stores, helping us reduce our carbon emissions.
Most of the packing material we sell is made from a high recycled content and we encourage staff and customers to recycle wherever possible.
Big Yellow will continue to introduce and promote green initiatives throughout its stores as we are deeply committed to acting responsibly in 2011 and beyond.
Tags: big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, byss, Environmental responsibility, green, recycle, recycling, self storage, self storage blog, Self Storage UK, UK storage
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Thursday, June 9th, 2011
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.
Tags: big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, byss, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, Self Storage UK, UK storage
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Tuesday, June 7th, 2011
We’ve been working with READ International, a network of students who volunteer at 45 universities across Britain. We’ve been able to provide storage for thousands of books, getting them ready for shipping to Tanzania and Uganda.
The latest shipment was loaded up on 9th May from Norwich and other Big Yellow stores with a staggering 296,965 books which volunteers had been collecting over the past year. These books are now on the way for educational use in deprived schools in East Africa.
To find out how you can get active with READ International or donate books to the project please visit their Facebook group.
Tags: armadillo self storage, big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, byss, Charity, READ International, self storage, self storage blog, Self Storage UK, UK storage
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Tuesday, May 31st, 2011
A family of blue tits have found a new home at our Big Yellow Colchester store in a wall mounted ashtray.
The tiny birds have been chirping away and a sign has been put in place to make sure people don’t use it while they are nesting.
We’ve decided not to charge rent, so the blue tits are welcome to stay until they’re ready to leave the nest!
Tags: big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, byss, clutter, de-clutter, declutter, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, Self Storage UK, storage, UK storage
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Wednesday, May 25th, 2011
Learning basic DIY can be a beneficial skill to have as you can save money on home improvement and emergency repairs. Here are some top tips on how to use DIY around your home.
If you’re a complete novice then it’s advised that you learn some basic skills from your friends and family as well as the many DIY websites online. In no time you’ll be looking for things to fix all over your home!
One important thing to remember about DIY is make sure you set enough time to complete a job and add an extra hour on top just to make sure. Most DIY errors occur when someone is trying to rush through a project. However if you start a job then you must finish it. Leaving a job unfinished can make your home look messy and if you leave tools out then it can become cluttered with items that take up space and could easily be removed.
Proper equipment should be a part of every homeowner’s tool box. This will help save time, money and ensure that you have the right tools to complete a wide variety of jobs. Tools can be very valuable and whenever you’re not looking for things to fix or planning any home improvements you could store them in one of our secure self storage rooms until they’re needed again.
To find out how you can benefit from self storage or if you’re looking for somewhere to store your tools, visit www.bigyellow.co.uk to get started.
Tags: armadillo self storage, big yellow, Big Yellow Self Storage, byss, clutter, de-clutter, declutter, DIY, personal storage, self storage, self storage blog, Self Storage UK, UK storage
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