Whether you don’t have enough space in your home or you want to put your items to ensure their security, a storage unit will benefit you. If you have a storage unit, you can freely put anything you like and guarantee they’re safe, especially if you’re too afraid of burglars coming into your home.
To keep you confident and secure about your items, you should look for a good storage unit in your area that would allow you to bring your stuff with ease. You can look for reputable storage units online and find one that could best ensure the safety of your things. You need to do it as soon as you can, however, as the available spaces could quickly run out.
But no matter how advantageous a storage unit is, there are things you should never store inside. Here’s a list of some of these things.
1. Any Living Things
One of the most obvious things you should never put in your storage unit is any living thing such as animals and plants. Even succulent plants should not be left inside as they’d still need air, a few drops of water, and a bit of sunlight to survive. Storage units are generally unventilated, without any access to fresh air and sunlight, causing any living thing to die.
If you don’t want your living things at home, never put them inside your storage unit as chances are high they’d die. You could look for alternative ways of storing them or find them a new home instead of trapping them inside an enclosed space.
2. Perishable Items
No matter how much you want to do so, avoid storing perishable goods inside your unit. You could place some dehydrated and canned foods whose expiry dates last for years or don’t require refrigeration. But you should never keep anything that’d perish in a few hours to weeks.
Apart from getting your food spoiled, it could also affect everything inside your unit. The perishable food could attract rodents and insects, which could damage your other items, as well as items in your neighboring units.
Aside from these, you could also put the health of people in the entire facility at risk, particularly from the harmful gasses the perishable items might emit when they rot. Perishable goods could develop microbes like yeasts, bacteria, and mold as they spoil. And as they do, they emit harmful gasses, which could be dangerous when inhaled.
3. Hazardous Materials
Your storage unit isn’t a hazard-proof place wherein you could store dangerous chemicals. While this might be obvious, some people might miss out on the idea of which items are dangerous to place inside their unit. Things like biological waste, acids, toxic materials, flammables, asbestos, cleaning materials, and fertilizers are best to be kept away from storage units.
While the last two may sound safe to keep inside, when you fail to store them properly, they could mix with other products, creating fumes. This could be dangerous not only for your items and unit but for the entire property as well.
4. Wet Furniture Or Clothing
Wet items like wet clothes and furniture can do damage inside your unit. If you store your wet items in your storage unit, given the lack of proper ventilation inside, they could develop molds, mildew, and fungi. This could in turn destroy everything that’s inside your unit. Moreover, if they stay longer inside, they could also damage the entire facility and pose health risks.
If you’re using a pickup truck to bring your items into your unit, ensure you bring them on a warm sunny day and use a protective cover to keep them from getting wet. And before locking your storage unit up, it’s best to check everything and make sure all items are dry.
5. High-Value Items And Money
No matter how tight the security is inside your storage unit, it’s still not foolproof, and even burglars know it for sure. Apart from residences, storage units are also the target of thieves as they know people usually keep high-value items inside.
Ideally, you shouldn’t include your high-value jewelry and cash inside a storage unit. You can choose to purchase a safe and hide it in an inconspicuous place in your home, where burglars won’t likely find them. This way, you could be confident your jewelry is with you and safe at all times.
Conclusion
Having a storage unit could help you save space and keep the things you value in a safe area. However, there are limitations with what you can keep. This is important to have in mind as it would help prevent any damage to some of your items and any health concerns along the way.
You can check with the management if they have a list of what you can and can’t keep inside your unit. Also, try to visit your storage unit at least every month so you can check the condition of your items and see if everything’s still complete and in perfect condition for ease of mind.