College Students: Be Smart When You Store Your Stuff
It’s summer break for most college students, and that means that you’ve probably already packed up your dorm room, apartment, or off-campus house and headed home for a few months. But what exactly did you do with all your stuff? Did you cram everything into your car, Tetris-style, until you created a safety hazard? Did you leave it at a friend’s house and hope for the best? Did you dump everything on the curb because you thought about storage too late and now you’re going to have to buy all new things?
Next time around, start thinking about storage options more than a day before you’re clearing off of campus. Here are a few tips to store your possessions without worrying about damage, wasted money, or too much heavy lifting.
Get More for Your Money
Everyone knows how expensive college is; you shouldn’t have to spend lots of money on summer storage, too. If you think you’ll need a storage unit, the best way to get a good price is to start calling local facilities before the peak season (aka when everyone else is trying to leave for the summer). Begin the process in the spring, and be sure to ask about student discounts as well (you’d be surprised by how many facilities are willing to negotiate a student discount, even if they don’t advertise it).
Need to save even more money? Consider splitting the cost of a storage unit with a friend if you aren’t going to fill up the whole space yourself. There’s no point in paying for space you’re not using.
Maximize Your Space
Speaking of not paying for more space than you need, you should figure out about how much space you need before you put down money for a storage unit. There’s nothing worse than paying too much for a giant space that dwarfs all your stuff—other than maybe realizing too late that you can’t fit everything into a small unit.
It can be tough to estimate how much space all your possessions will take, but these general guidelines may help:
• If you’re moving out of a freshman dorm that came furnished, a 5×5 foot unit should give you enough space for a desk, chair, lamp, and a dozen boxes.
• Sophomores who need to store the above items and also have their own mattress and box spring should upgrade to a 5×10 space.
• Juniors who need to store the contents of studio apartment will likely want a 5×15 unit.
• Seniors or any students who have furnished their own off-campus house may want a 10×10 unit.
Pack Like a Boss
Nobody likes packing, but it’s a necessary evil. Follow these tips to get done faster, keep your belongings in better condition, stay organized, and avoid breaking too much of a sweat.
• Fill every box. Just as you want to maximize your space in the storage unit, you’ll want to fit as much as you can in every box. Not only is this a better use of your space, it will keep the box from caving in if you stack heavier items on top of it. If you have extra space, cram in some bubble wrap or newspaper.
• Don’t put all the heavy items in the same box. Filling up a large cardboard box with hardback textbooks is a classic freshman mistake. Distribute heavier and lighter items throughout your boxes (or stick to smaller boxes for heavy things like books) to avoid injuring yourself.
• Stick with similar-sized boxes. If you can, find boxes that are all about the same size so that it will be easy to stack them.
• Pack backwards. When you’re loading up your car or the moving truck, put in the boxes that you need the quickest access to first. That way, when you unload everything at your storage unit, the important stuff will be the last to go into the space—and the first to come out in the fall.
• Control for temperature. If you go to school somewhere that gets particularly hot in the summer, like Texas or Florida, you may want to opt for a climate controlled storage unit so that temperature-sensitive items won’t be damaged.
All that really doesn’t sound so bad, right? With a little preparation, storing your stuff over the summer is nothing to stress about. To get even more tips, check out this infographic from Next Door Self Storage.
