self-storage

New Temperature Controlled Storage Ready to Rent

By Wade at Spout Spring Storage on February 22, 2021

We’re excited to announce that we have new temperature controlled units available to rent at our facility! We have exactly 7 brand new temperature controlled units waiting for their 1st happy customers. Are you looking for temperature controlled storage in Spout Spring, VA or in Appomattox County? Learn more about the brand new units that we have to offer!

Temperature Controlled Units That are Worth the Wait!

Take our word for it when we say that the journey has not been easy to get these new units available for our customers, but they are so worth the wait! Each of these new temperature controlled storage units has a brand new premium Trachte roll-up door, high-security cylinder locks, which is all secured behind a high-security Trinity electronic locking door.

Each customer will be provided a unique electronic combo to open the front door to these units. When a customer moves out of one of our temperature controlled units, we promptly erase the previous electronic combo that they used while renting with us.

What does that all mean? It means that we treat security and the safety of your belongings as a top priority here at Spout Spring Storage!

Temperature Controlled Units Photo Gallery

Looking for a Safe Place to Store Your Valuables?

If you’re looking for a safe place to store your valuables, your antiques or your medical records, then these new temperature controlled storage units are just what you’re looking for. We offer some of the most affordable pricing on quality storage in Appomattox County, Virginia. To learn more, or rent one of these brand new units click the link to the right. Grab one before they rent out!

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10 Tips to Packing Your Storage Unit

By Wade at Spout Spring Storage on June 5, 2019

10 Quick Tips to Packing Your Self Storage Unit

Whether you are a veteran packer who happily jumps into the world of storage and organization, or you are timid when it comes to the real of storage and organization, our 10 tips to packing your storage unit is sure to help! Packing your things into a storage unit doesn’t have to be a chaotic experience.

We want to take the extra mile to help our customers through their entire storage experience. One of the ways to do this is to provide helpful content about storage and organization in general.

Think Vertical Storage Space
Secure Boxes the Higher They are Stacked
Clear Storage Unit Aisle to the Back of Your Unit
Heavy Boxes on the Bottom and Light Boxes on Top
Use Bubble-Wrap, Newspapers and Packaging Peanuts
Use Packing Blankets to Protect Furniture
Invest in Space Saver Bags
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Label Boxes for Ultimate Organization
Wardrobe Boxes are Worth the Cost

Tip #1. Think Vertical Storage Space

Have ever seen the professional movers packing up an entire house to move across the country? If not, it really is an amazing site to see because of the amazing level of organization that they achieve in their moving trucks. All of their moving boxes are stacked perfectly on top of each other, no item out of place, and the boxes are stacked all the way to the very top of the truck. Every square inch of the truck has been accounted for and organized for the move. The real professionals walk through the house the day before and take a full inventory of all of the items that will need to be shipped and they estimate the number of boxes, blankets and packaging materials that will be used in the move.

That is why thinking vertical storage is our first tip in our 10 tips to packing your storage unit. Think of your storage unit just like a professional mover’s truck and look up as you continue to pack your storage unit with your items. If you are starting to feel like you are running out of space, just look up. There is usually enough room to stack another set of boxes near the ceiling of your storage unit. So one of our first tips to remember what you packed in your storage unit is to make sure that you cross out or scribble out any of the old descriptions that you had written on boxes that you’re reusing. We’d recommend that you use a thick sharpie and scratch out all of the old lines of text that way. Then when you begin packing your boxes you can easily label each of them, and know what is in the boxes quickly when you are in your storage unit.

Tip #2. Secure Boxes the Higher They are Stacked

With a sky scraper, the higher the building goes into the sky, the larger, deeper and stronger the foundation needs to be. Remember that same idea when you begin stacking your boxes higher and higher in your storage facility. The higher you go up, the more you need to ensure that those boxes are secure. You can do this by using bungee cables to secure the boxes together, or potentially brace them against one of the walls of your storage unit.

Tip #3. Clear Storage Unit Aisle to the Back of Your Unit

I know that it is one of the last things you are considering doing when you are packing your storage unit, but this is a crucial point to consider. Especially if you are planning on renting a unit and visiting the unit frequently, it is a great idea to leave an aisle going through the center of your storage unit. That way you can easily get back to the boxes in the back of your unit.

An even better idea is to leave a little bit of space around the sides of your boxes too, so that you can get to what you are looking for quickly and easily. We can’t tell you how many times someone has needed to get something from their unit, and they have to unpack the majority of the unit just to get what they are looking for. Or worse, they don’t remember where the item is, so they have to start unpacking boxes! Take the time in the beginning will save you tons of time later on, and fewer headaches too!

Tip #4. Heavy Boxes on the Bottom and Light Boxes on Top

Plan ahead as you are getting your truck packed to haul your things to the storage facility by putting the heaviest items onto your truck last, and placing all of your lighter items on the truck first. By doing this when you get to your storage unit, you will have all of the heavy items to take off the truck first and put them right into your storage unit. Put the heaviest boxes or totes at the bottom of your stack of belongings, and then place all of the lighter items as you move higher and higher into your facility.

We feel like this is one of the least thought of tips to packing your storage unit, but one that is also very helpful. This also makes life a whole lot easier because you don’t have to spend time searching for the heavier items and sorting the lighter items out to be placed in the storage facility later. You’ll find that you can unpack your moving truck much quicker if you plan your packing ahead of time before you get to the storage facility.

Tip #5. Use Bubble-Wrap, Newspapers and Packaging Peanuts

While this may seem like an obvious tip on our list of tips to packing your storage unit, you would be surprised how many people just throw their items into their storage unit. Spending the small amount of money on packing materials like bubble-wrap or packaging peanuts will help to keep your more fragile items safe and secure during the transportation of your items to and from the storage facility.

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Tip #6. Use Packing Blankets to Protect Furniture

This is another tip that professionals use when they are hauling furniture, or anything that can’t be put into a box. They use packing blankets, which they wrap their furniture with. Finally after they wrap up any furniture, the blankets are secured with a cling-wrap type packing material.

While you can use blankets from your home, there are also recycled blankets that can be purchased, which are specifically made for moving. A quick recommendation if you use the recycled blankets is that they can be slightly irritating to the skin, so make sure to wear a long-sleeve shirt to reduce any potential irritation.

Tip #7. Invest in Space Saver Bags

If you haven’t already seen the infomercials on your television about space saver bags, they are a pretty amazing invention and is one of our tips to packing your storage unit. It is basically a bag with a one-way valve, which can be used with a vacuum to suck out all of the air in the bag. This means that bulky items such as pillows or clothing will shrink down to a fraction of their size when they are placed in space saver bags. So effectively with space saver bags, you are getting more space for your belongings, while protecting your things from the elements.

A quick tip on space saver bags is that these things can get really heavy. Some of the larger space saver bags can fit 4 or 5 blankets, which means that they start getting heavy fast. Be careful when lifting your space saver bag, be ready for the weight. All things being said though, we love space saver bags because of how much more efficient you can be with your available space.

Tip #8. Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Take the least used items and pack them all together towards the back of your storage unit. This is one of our tips to packing your storage unit because we know that other people have benefited from hearing about this idea. That way all of the items that you are more likely to need, like sports equipment, summer beach gear, or winter clothing is packed at the front of the storage unit. This may take a little bit more time when planning how to organize your storage unit, but it will save you headaches later when you are looking for what you need, and you are your way out of town to go to the beach.

Tip #9. Label Boxes for Ultimate Organization

I don’t know about you, but we love to be as organized as possible. We feel like we are more productive and effective with our time, that we can just get more things done throughout the day by being a little more organized. One of the best ways to do that is to label your storage boxes and totes.

This can be done in a few different ways, one of which is to sort the boxes and totes by color coding them. So you would split out your house into different colors that match with different parts of the house. The kitchen could be orange, the living room green and so on and so forth. So at the end you would have a color for every section of your house. Then all you need to do is use labels or colored sharpies and mark the boxes or totes with the corresponding colors. Now when you need to get to your items for the living room, just look for the green labels and you can find those items quickly and easily. This also makes an amazing difference when you are unpacking your things or moving into a new house. Make sure to keep a legend or color chart so that you remember what every color is!

The other way that this can be done is to simply write-out what is in the contents of each of the boxes and totes that you are using. This takes a little bit more time than just using the color chart, but it can be more effective when trying to find a very specific item in your storage unit. I would recommend using the color labeling approach over writing out the description of the boxes. I feel like this works a lot better for me, but it all comes down to your personal preference at the end of the day.

Tip #10. Wardrobe Boxes are Worth the Cost

Wardrobe boxes can be pricey, but they are another amazing tool to store all of your clothes that needs to be hung on hangers. Now these wardrobe boxes are very large, so be careful when you are moving your wardrobe boxes. You can also store a ton of clothing in the wardrobe boxes and they are very sturdy, so they can support the weight. At the end of the day they will also save you time when you are unpacking your clothes back at your house.

Closing Thoughts

Hopefully you are able to use a few of the storage tips that we spoke about in this article the next time that you rent a self storage unit. If you’re local to Concord or Spout Spring Virginia you might want to learn more about Spout Spring Storage?

Maybe you want to learn more about our storage facility solutions or amenities. Click one of the buttons to the right to learn more.

10 Tips to Remember What’s Packed in Your Storage Unit

By Wade at Spout Spring Storage on June 4, 2019

10 Solid Tips to Keep Track of Your Storage Belongings

One of the most frustrating parts about packing up your belongings into a storage unit is if you need to find one specific item, but you can’t remember where it is! Worst case scenario you have to unpack a bunch of boxes, or you just give up and buy what you couldn’t find in your boxes in the first place. Here are 10 tips to remember what you packed in your storage unit so that you can find anything in your storage unit more easily.

Cleanup Reused Boxes
Date Boxes
Write Descriptions on Boxes
Write Descriptions on Multiple Sides of Boxes
Create Master List AND Make a Copy
Keep Master List Handy at Storage Unit
Group Similar Items Together When Packing
Layout Where Everything Goes in Storage Unit
Heavy Items Go To Back
Number Your Boxes

Tip #1. Cleanup Reused Boxes

For most people they will move more than once in their lifetimes, and that means that they will most likely be reusing some of their boxes from previous moves. I don’t know about you, but I know that we have always labeled our boxes during our moves. What this ends up looking like after 2 or 3 moves is a bunch of scribbled descriptions that you can’t make any sense of at the end of the day.

So one of our first tips to remember what you packed in your storage unit is to make sure that you cross out or scribble out any of the old descriptions that you had written on boxes that you’re reusing. We’d recommend that you use a thick sharpie and scratch out all of the old lines of text that way. Then when you begin packing your boxes you can easily label each of them, and know what is in the boxes quickly when you are in your storage unit.

Tip #2. Date Boxes

A good one of our tips to remember what you packed in your storage unit is to add a date to the boxes so that you know when you packed the box. Writing a date a long with providing a description on the boxes gives that added detail to help you if you are storing years worth of items.

Maybe you want to get to the box that has all of your military uniforms back when you were in the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets and then the Army. You can quickly find that in your storage unit by looking at the dates that you’ve written on the boxes.

Tip #3. Write Descriptions on Boxes

After dating your boxes, make sure to add a description of what you put in the boxes. This is one of our tips to remember what you packed in your storage unit that pays dividends later down the road. Simply write a quick description on the side of each of your boxes with details about what is in the box, or the area of your house where you packed the box.

For example if you wrote kitchen on one of your boxes, you would know that you’re not going to find tennis balls in there. This will make it easier when you’re looking for items in your unit, and when you’re unpacking your boxes if you move to a new house or apartment.

Tip #4. Write Descriptions on Multiple Sides of Boxes

This is one of our tips that is overlooked by many people. They write a description on the top or one side of their box, but they don’t write the description on other sides of the box. So what can happen is you store your boxes all with the descriptions all facing out of sight, so you can’t figure out what is in the boxes.

To solve this problem, make sure to write the descriptions on multiple sides of the box so that you can make sure to find the description fairly readily when you are in your storage unit. This can take more time, but it is one of those things that will make your life so much easier later down the road.

Tip #5. Create Master List and Make a Copy

We think that this tip is one of our best tips to remember what you packed in your storage unit. Having a master list of the items in your storage unit is really a next-level type of activity that few people would think about doing. The reason for this is that it takes time, time which many people would rather spend not thinking about packing, storing and organizing their things. So how could we make this tip easier to do?

You could have someone in your family be assigned as the official scribe of the move, someone who had the only job to write down everything that is being packed and stored and the box that it is being packed in. This can be done through labeling, or through a numbering system of the boxes. So for example in Box #1 there are clothes, shoes and sheets, and in Box #2 there are dishes.

Then when you go back to your master list you can see all the boxes, their corresponding numbers and what is in each of the boxes. Finally make sure to make a copy of your master packing storage list, it will come in handy later.

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Tip #6. Keep Master List Handy at Storage Unit

This may seem like one of our obvious tips to remember what you packed in your storage unit, but keep a copy of your master packing storage list in your storage unit and also at home. Many times you may send your son, husband or wife to get something out of the storage unit, but they forget to bring your handy master packing storage list.

So taping a copy of this master list to the wall of your storage unit will help someone in your family who needs to find something quickly and easily. It is always a good idea to have a backup copy at home if you’re trying to remember where something is in your house, which may have been put into storage.

Tip #7. Group Similar Items Together When Packing

By grouping similar items together, you can quickly figure out the right box in your storage unit that has what you’re looking for. Now you can group items together based on different things. For example, you could group everything based on the room that they were in, like “kitchen” or “laundry room”. Or you can group your items based on what the type of item that is in the box, like “maps of Spout Spring, VA” or “Appomattox County, VA”. So if you are looking for your old high school books from you can readily find that box. Now the hard part is being able to move a box full of books!

Tip #8. Layout Where Everything Goes in Storage Unit

One of our last tips to remember what you packed in your storage unit is to plan ahead before you start packing your storage unit up. Before you start throwing things into your storage unit, take a minute to map out specific areas where you want to place certain items. For example in the right hand corner place all of your kitchen supplies. When you come back looking for something, you know you can look in a certain place of your storage unit to find what you’re looking for.

Adding to this tip, you can draw out the sections of your storage unit on a piece of paper and attach it to the wall along with your master storage packing list. So that makes it so much easier to get to what you’re looking for fast.

Tip #9. Heavy Items Go To Back

As a rule of thumb, place your heavier items at the back of the unit and your lighter items at the front of the unit. More than likely all of the heavier items, except those University of Lynchburg college textbooks, aren’t going to be needed on a weekly or monthly basis. The lighter items usually would need to be accessible and used more frequently, like beach towels or winter clothes.

Another way to go about this is to put all the heavy items to one side of your storage unit, on the right or left of the unit. Then you will know lighter items on one side and heavier items on the other side, and you can make that mental note when you’re looking for something.

Tip #10. Number Your Boxes

Our final tip of the tips to remember what you packed in your storage unit, corresponds with putting together your master packing storage list. Number your boxes as you pack them up and then write down the numbers and their contents on your master list. So once you are finished packing, you will have a nice list of numbered boxes that you can quickly find.

Closing Thoughts

We hope that you got some useful nuggets of information out of this article. If you’re local to Concord or Spout Spring Virginia you might want to learn more about Spout Spring Storage?

Maybe you want to learn more about our storage facility solutions or amenities. Click one of the buttons to the right to learn more.

Traditional Storage vs. Temperature Controlled Storage

By Wade at Spout Spring Storage on June 3, 2019

Choosing the Right Storage for Your Needs

One of the decisions to be made when considering a self storage unit is whether to rent a traditional unit or a temperature controlled unit. Both of these types of units have their place in the world of self storage. A quick note, Spout Spring Storage offers storage solutions to the residents of Spout Spring, Concord, Appomattox and the surrounding counties of Appomattox County and Campbell County Virginia. In this post we’ll talk more about these two types of storage that are offered at our storage facility.

Temperature Controlled Storage

When we think of temperature controlled storage, we think of storage that provides that extra level of premium protection to your valuables. This is in the form of climate-controlled, or temperature controlled storage units. Temperature controlled storage units are part of a building that has a complete HVAC system, with both a furnace, or heat pump and an air conditioning unit as well. The temperature of the storage units is controlled with a standard residential thermostat, which guarantees that your storage unit will maintain a consistent temperature throughout the year.

While there will be a certain amount of variation in the temperature range that storage facilities maintain their temperature controlled storage, at SmartLock Self-Storage we maintain our temperature controlled storage units at 80 degrees in the summer and at 60 degrees in the winter. We feel like this provides a very comfortable temperature for our tenants valuables.

Key Benefit to Temperature Controlled Storage

The key attraction and premium benefit to temperature controlled storage is with a temperature controlled environment, your belongings will not experience the hot and cold temperature fluctuations that occur in the summer and winter months.

Temperature Controlled Storage Comes At a Premium Price

Now a downside to the benefit of temperature controlled storage is that you will be paying a premium for the storage space. That being said, temperature controlled storage can be easily justified based on what you are planning to store in your storage unit. Let’s take a look at some of the items that would be suited for self storage in a temperature controlled unit.

Specific Items to Store in a Temperature Controlled Unit

There are several items that we would recommended to store in temperature controlled storage units, because they are generally more delicate and fragile. See our list of items to the right.

Collectibles such as coins, stamps, comic books, historic newspapers
Valuable electronics & electronic equipment
Delicate scientific instruments
Delicate antiques & art
Family heirlooms

We’ve covered the basics on temperature controlled storage, now let’s take a minute to look at traditional, or regular storage units.

Traditional or Regular Storage Units

On the other end of the spectrum of self storage is the traditional or regular storage unit. This type of storage is the bread and butter of self storage and is offered by almost all storage facilities. Contrasting to temperature controlled storage, there is no temperature control provided with traditional storage.

Due to the lack of temperature control, traditional storage experiences both the low temperatures of the winter as well as the high temperatures of the summer. While this is perfectly fine for the majority of your belongings, some more delicate items such as electronics may be damaged by these extreme temperatures.

Key Benefit to Traditional Storage

The key attraction to traditional storage is that it is the more affordable storage solution compared to temperature controlled storage, and is more than adequate for the majority of all items that need to go into storage.

Summary

When considering the type of storage that you need for your belongings, you can think of your storage unit as if it is a garage or a basement. A garage would be equivalent to traditional storage and your basement would be equivalent to temperature controlled storage.

If you would be perfectly fine with storing your items in your garage, then opting for traditional storage sounds like the ideal solution for you. Contrasting to a basement, that provides a cooler, more temperature controlled environment, you may prefer to store your items in your basement rather than the garage.

If you are storing valuable belongings in a storage unit, more often than not, the additional price to pay for temperature controlled storage is well worth the protection of your delicate valuables.

Interested in Learning More About Spout Spring Storage?

Would you like to find out more about Spout Spring Storage, or are you in the market for a self storage unit? We’re located in Spout Spring, VA, conveniently located right off of US-460. Click on one of the links to the left for more information, we hope to earn your storage business in the future!

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