The idea of living a minimalist life is one that has really taken off. People are looking at their lives and their homes, trying to declutter and make everything neat and tidy. Whether this is your business office or your home, a minimalist life is not out of the question.
What is a Minimalist Lifestyle?
This lifestyle is all about decluttering your life. It is about achieving a living environment that is clutter free, tidy and organized. Those who achieve this often find that they have less stress and that they simply love their space. After all, it is often the clutter in a home that makes a person rethink everything in it!
How Self Storage Can Help
The good news is that if you are after this type of lifestyle, a self storage unit can help. You first want to start with the decluttering process of your home. What do you have that you do not use every day? What are those items that you wouldn't miss if they were gone out of your home? Once you have these items, it then becomes a problem of what to do with this.
Some people decide to donate these items to those who are in need, give these away to those that know or even host a yard sale or sell these online. However, what happens when you may not need them now, but you don't want to get rid of these items? For example, you may not use those antique dishes that belonged to your grandmother, but yet you can't stand to part with these either? That is when you consider a self storage unit.
A self storage unit can provide you with another space to put those items that are cluttering your home, yet you don't want to part with. Many people use self storage units for more than just when they are in between homes, which is the common thought about self storage units. These units are used by many as a place to store those items that are seasonal, such as boating equipment or sporting equipment. And for those who are living a minimalist life, these storage units are a location to put those items that you still want in your life, just not in your home. At Smart Self Storage, we like to think of our beautiful self storage facilities as an extension of your home. We offer storage to fit your lifestyle!
What Items do Minimalists Store?
When it comes to storage, what exactly are minimalists storing? They are all about having just what they need in order to live in their home, so the overall answer is that they are putting almost anything that does not have an immediate purpose into their storage unit. However, for those who are new to this lifestyle, we have a few tips that can help you decide what to put into your new self storage unit and what to keep in your home!
- Have you used this item in the past 6 months? If you haven't, chances are you can put this into the storage unit without any issue.
- Do you have more than one of the item? Minimalists are all about only having one of an item, therefore if you have more than one of an item, you are going to want to put the other in storage.
- One of the biggest things that minimalists do is that they dress with less. Meaning that it may be time to clean out that closet. While some minimalists simply get rid of these items, for those who are just beginning into this lifestyle, simply put those items in storage to look at later. A good rule to follow: The Project 333 in which you dress with 33 items for 3 months.
- Do you have items that you never use but were a gift? These are taking up room in your home, so be sure that you store these in the storage unit.
Keeping Storage Tidy
With this new life change, you are going to find that it can also apply to your self storage unit. Just because this is going to be full of those items that you do not want in your home, does not mean that it should be thrown into these units every which way. Instead, take the time to organize this and keep it tidy. You can adopt the same type of tidy, minimalist life with your storage unit that you have with your home. (In fact, we previously wrote an article about Maximizing Your Self Storage Unit that offers a few fun tips on getting the most out of your unit while keeping it tidy and manageable.)
Remember, that when putting items into self storage in preparation for your minimalist lifestyle, you still need to pack these up just as if you were moving across country. For those breakables, be sure that you wrap these to avoid them being broken. And for clothing, store this in air tight containers to that there is no chance that moths could attack these clothes. Take time to do this right so that you can always go back into the storage unit to get those items that you have placed into the unit! (For tons of tips on this type of stuff, you may want to check out our extensive Self Storage Tips article.)
If you are ready to take on this lifestyle, then don't forget our self storage units. Our managers can help with any storage question that you may have, along with provide tips on how to keep this unit tidy!