New Uses for Portable Storage Units

02/13/10

Moving is the first and only thing most people think of when they think of portable storage units. You fill them, the moving company takes them away and delivers them to your new home, you unpack them... and that's all. However, they're good for many more purposes. A few less traditional uses of portable storage units are:

* Storing your belongings. Rather than loading everything into your car, driving to a storage facility, unloading everything into a storage room, and then reversing the process when it's time to empty the room, make the facility bring the room to you. Portable storage units have no time limits; you fill them at your own speed. Then with a phone call, you summon movers to whisk the units away. A phone call brings them back, and you can empty them without any hurry.

* A temporary storage shed. Portable storage units may have "portable" in their name, but who says they have to move? Rent a storage unit for the duration of a remodeling project, then send the unit back empty. It's less expensive and less permanent than getting a shed and offers your belongings more protection than setting up a tent.

* Mix and match. If you're doing a large remodeling project, rent portable storage units as temporary sheds. When the project is done, further improve your home by loading up one of the units with possessions that otherwise would sit in your attic or basement for a year, and send them off to the storage facility to be stored.

When you rent a portable storage unit, be creative. They may have been developed for one main use, but there's no reason to be hemmed into that use. If you want to keep the unit at your house, you can; if you don't want to use it to make moving to a new home easier, you can use it for storage for things from your house. They're temporary storage sheds, storage cubes with their own built in moving van, moving vans with their own built in storage cubes... Go outside the box, and put portable storage units to your own purposes.