It sometimes seems ironic that a time when homes are getting smaller, more roles are being demanded of them than ever before. In a survey by LABC, it’s clear that houses being built are now smaller than at any time since the 1930s.

Ironically in the 1930s, 85% of new houses sold for less than £750. This translates to around £45,000 in today’s money. In the mid-1930s, terraced houses in the London area could be bought for around £395, at a time when average earnings were about £165 per year (according to website Economics Help). By contrast, according to HM Land Registry, February 2021, the average property in the UK is now valued at £250,341. And that terraced house? It will set you back just over half a million pounds on average.

Meanwhile, while the average 1930’s home had 3.21 bedrooms, today’s has 2.95, and master bedrooms have shrunk by more than two metres squared.

Sofas, meanwhile, seem to be about seven inches bigger in both depth and length. So it’s easy to see where space pressure is coming from.

Here are six ways that temporary storage can ease the strain.

1. Affordability

Self-storage and warehousing prices may in general have gone up but not at easyStorage, which now offers storage at around half the price of traditional storage, in addition to collecting and dropping off your belongings, free.

2. Flexibility and Convenience

In the bad old days, you had to take on a self-storage unit for a minimum period of sometimes as long as a year, and hire vans to go backwards and forwards.

easyStorage offers flexible time periods for storage, and will both collect your goods and bring them back, saving the costs and hassle of borrowed or rental vans.

Moreover, you only need to rent the size of pod most appropriate to your needs. (There’s even a calculator available to help, and if you order too many pods, you will only be charged for what you use.)

3. High-Security Levels

It’s almost certain that your goods will be held in a far more secure environment than they would at home. In addition to security measures, your easyPod is sealed before leaving you, and not opened until it’s returned.

4. Decluttering Decisions Deferred

We all know about decluttering, especially if you read this blog.

But sometimes decisions are hard to make. There are those gorgeous lamps that you love, but which don’t belong in your current décor scheme. There are things you can’t bring yourself to part with, but which create clutter.

There are also clothes you bring out once a year for parties (or every two if COVID has its way!), seasonal decorations like Christmas tree decorations and Hallowe’en props. These can be out of the way giving you more space and calm to enjoy your life.

Cheap self-storage is now at an affordable enough level to give you the extra space to store all of these things.

5. Making space for a home office

Working at home all or part of the time has become more common. A recent report from Microsoft Surface and YouGov, ‘Work Smarter to live Better’, found that in light of the pandemic, almost nine out of ten employees’ companies have adapted to working from home, at least some of the time.

This may come with some challenges, including interruptions and a lack of ‘water cooler’ moments.

But there is no need to let lack of space be one of those difficulties. No-one yet knows where everything will pan out, and whether May will genuinely see us all going back to ‘normal’. In the meantime, life is so much easier getting old paperwork out of the way, along with other things that have had to be moved in order to make room for a desk or workspace.

It’s worth considering a self-storage option for these things, at least until the dust settles on the current situation and we have a time of more certainty. At least you can be sure your desk is still there, and working at it won’t be (such) a chore.

6. Life events

There are life events like death and divorce that create upheaval. Self-storage allows you to hold onto your belongings while you get on with getting yourself back to a new ‘normal’, avoiding making important decisions until they can be made with a little more certainty.

For a no obligation quote for self-storage in your area, the easyStorage online tool makes it, well, easy.

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