6 Things You Should Never Ever Put in Storage

While you can keep most possessions in storage some things just aren’t made to be stored. You might think it’s pretty obvious what you can and cannot store away, but trust us, we’ve come across some odd things in our storage vaults during our years in the business…

Anyway, let us just give you a little reminder of what you shouldn’t put in storage under any circumstances.

1. Anything hazardous

While you may have litres of acid hanging about your home this cannot be transferred to storage facilities. Paint, bleach, petrol, anything that could cause serious damage to anything else comes under dangerous and should be kept well away from storage units. This applies to bombs, firearms and fireworks as well.

These could cause damage to not only your property but also the self storage unit itself. Try to avoid doing this as you’re likely to be liable if there is damage caused. You won’t be very happy if half of your property is burned or bleached when you come to collect it so try to think logically about what to keep in storage.

2. Food

While you might think you’ll want a snack when collecting your items in storage try to remember that if that food can rot it probably isn’t the best idea for keeping. This also applies to pet food and other perishable items. When you pick up your stuff a few weeks or months down the line and are confronted with rotten food and unwanted pe(s)ts you’ll be angry as well as hungry.

This is especially true for foods that are meant to be kept cold. For example, you will not be happy if two weeks after storing it away you arrive back to green milk and all your possessions smelling less than pleasant.

3. Anything alive

While someone might annoy you or your pet might be on a particularly destructive streak, storage units are not the answer. Believe it or not, but they neither have the food preparation facilities or the bathroom space for living things to inhabit.

The same goes for wild animals. It may be your dream to start a zoo but a storage unit is just not the place to host it. Try using a more natural habitat like your local park or swimming pool especially for the bigger creatures like tigers or swordfish. Otherwise you may risk damaging the unit which you would end up being liable for.

Plants also fall under this category and while storage containers may seem like ideal greenhouses they surprisingly aren’t. Plants put into storage will have no light or water which will eventually end in a biological disaster.

4. Anything dead

On the opposite side of the spectrum from the last paragraph, storage units are not your personal cemeteries either. Not only will whatever you’re keeping leave a terrible smell, but it will also be rotten within a day no matter how much ice you use.

Not to mention whatever you’re planning on keeping is probably illegal and would cause quite a bit of trouble for the average storage company so it should be kept strictly to your private property.

5. Cash

Self storage is not the adequate place to store large amounts of cash or any other valuables for that matter. Although our storage facilities are secure and no one but yourself will have access to your own storage unit, the best place for money, valuables and important documents is in the bank.

6. Anything larger than the storage unit

This may seem obvious, yet so many people still attempt to fit things that were never made for storage into storage units every week. From cars to boats, there have been attempts at fitting all sorts of things into spaces that are just not big enough. This problem could be easily solved by looking up how much storage space you actually have in advance – yet few people actually do this.

This wastes time and money for you and the company so should ideally be avoided. Try to remember to get storage space that’s suitable for whatever you need stored because while you may seem to be saving money now you’ll lose out in the long term.

For more advice on how to pack for storage and what you can’t put in storage, see our Packing Tips page.

 

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