I have looked around my apartment so many times and thought to myself that I must get rid of some of this clutter. Too much furniture, not enough space. But there are so many things I want to keep! I don’t want to sell or get rid of so many things. What should I do? What’s the solution?
I suppose the right thing to do is to put it in storage but how can I be sure who is the right storage company?
Will they really look after my precious stuff carefully? Will my valuable items be insured?
And what happens if I want to get something out?
How will I go about it?
Is there a human being I can talk to or just a machine?
So, I started to do some research to see who the really good companies are and I found Ribua Self Storage just 10 minutes from where I live. Not that that makes a lot of difference because they arrange for collection of all the stuff I want stored anyway. There I found helpful English-speakers who understood what I needed and my few items seemed to be given as much consideration as if I was storing contents of an entire house. Furniture storage is not something that should be taken lightly, as when you want to retrieve that beautiful Victorian chaise longue in a year or two, you want to be sure that it’s been well looked after and in the same good condition in which you first stored it.
Steps for storing furniture in storage units
Step 1: Decide what it is you want to put in a storage unit to give yourself more space at home. Make a proper list that you can give to the self-storage company so that they can give you an accurate quotation depending on the space the items will take up. You will be pleasantly surprised that Ribua’s prices are very reasonable considering the excellent service they give.
Step 2: you need boxes and packing materials if you’ve got lots of small bits and pieces which we all seem to accumulate and you have decided to pack those small things yourself. Don’t skimp on wrapping paper and bubble wrap because you always need more than you think whether you are storing furniture or kitchen utensils and equipment and fragile items. Once you’ve wrapped everything as carefully as you can, and placed it in the boxes, you need to seal the storage boxes with masking tape and most important of all, remember to label clearly what is in the contents. If you don’t want to divulge that information on the top of the box, then give it a numerical code that only means something to you.
Step 3: Give Ribua a call and you’re done! Furniture storage makes sense provided you choose the right company that has the right storage units for your needs. They are not all born equal. And the best thing is that you can now relax and forget all about your treasures until you need them. Look around at the extra space you’ve created – it’s like you’ve built an extra room.
The months go by, maybe years, and you’re worry free. But what happens when you want to retrieve something? I’ve just had a call from a close friend saying that she’s trying to locate a piano as her young son has suddenly become interested. He’s had a few lessons and is now asking for a piano of his own. She remembered that I had a piano that I no longer used and I told her that I was going to put it into a storage. So, she’s asking, what’s the chance of your removing it from storage? So once again I was pleasantly surprised. I got in touch with Ribua and that same nice man (I think his name is Yaacov) answered my call. I couldn’t believe it – he remembered me! That really makes you feel that someone cares. Needless to say, he arranged everything I needed. Even gave me the contact details of a great moving company, who specialise in moving pianos.
A week later I went to see my friend and her music-loving son to say hello. Really, I was checking on the condition of my lovely old piano that I should have sold. So glad I didn’t! There he was, painstakingly playing Fur Elise, which took me back to my own childhood.
Most of all, my piano was in the same perfect condition in which it entered the storage unit. I looked around my friend’s tiny flat. It was full of furniture that she’d had for years. It was really cluttered and now that there was a piano in the room, you could hardly move from one side of the room to the other. and said to her “Have you ever thought about furniture storage?”
She said it hadn’t occurred to her before and asked me to tell her all about it. I talked her through my experience with Ruibe, and as her son struggled with Beethoven, and we tried not to cringe at the wrong notes. We then went round their apartment together and found dozens of things she didn’t use any more but didn’t want to get rid of, just in case….
We started in the kitchen, and there were dozens of plates, tea-sets, and dinner services, saucepans, frying pans and several duplicates of kitchen equipment like kettles, an old mixer, a hand-blender, all of which she wanted to keep, so the ideal situation was to put it all into a storage unit and make some space for herself. She promised me she would do that.
One week later she phoned me in a state of great excitement.
@It’s all gone, she said excitedly, but yet I’ve still got it. So, I have the best of both worlds. Its all out of my way, and its not taking up space, and yet I can access it at any time I choose.@
Happy to have helped a friend.