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Five Top Tips for a Successful Decluttering
There are lots of benefits to having a ‘stock take’ of your home. There’s less to clean, less to tidy up, it creates more living space, and it’s good practice if you are considering a move in the near future.
Hamiltons Removals supply high-quality, competitively priced packing materials from our base on the Norfolk-Suffolk border. Here are our top tips for a successful decluttering, even if you aren’t going to move house soon.
Have a Routine
You don’t need to get rid of everything in one go. Do it room by room, and even then, accept that you may not be able to do the whole room in a day. Setting aside a certain number of minutes each day for decluttering will help you greatly in this regard.
If you have children, get them involved as well, and not just if it’s their bedroom that needs clearing out. You will make them feel part of the process, and they may even enjoy it!
Put Your Possessions into Categories
One way of making progress is to create categories for your items. One of these should be marked ‘dustbin’, another ‘give away’, another ‘donate’, another ‘keep’, and lastly ‘relocate’.
So the first one takes care of all the items that are destined for the rubbish bin, and will be of no use to anyone. Give away can be clothes which no longer fit you, or are of no use to you whatsoever (these can be sold as well as given away to charity shops, friends or family). Relocate can mean putting away somewhere else in the house (even if it’s just putting a pair of socks in the right drawer). And, keep are those items which you still use or can’t bear to part with.
Do all the Rooms
You might think that the main living spaces (such as the lounge) are the only rooms you have to worry about – wrong! The bathroom may be full of out-of-date beauty products and medicines. Similarly, the kitchen may be full of ingredients that are past their best before date.
Again, get the children involved – it is the summer holidays after all. There may also be financial benefit for them if they can sell on old toys that they don’t use any more.
Be Prepared to be Brutal
There may be some things you want to keep because of their sentimental value (such as clothing you wore on a first date, a favourite toy from your childhood). However, these may not fit you any longer and may be full of holes – so is it really worth keeping them for that reason? If it doesn’t serve any useful purpose, get rid of it, or give it to someone else who’ll be able to make more use out of it.
One way of working out which items you use regularly is to only hang the clothes you use the correct way – anything you don’t wear should be put back-to-front. Give yourself six months and see what your wardrobe looks like, then get rid of all of those items not hanging the right way round.
A similar approach can be used with other items too. For example, put all your kitchen utensils in a big box, then only put them into the right drawer once you have used them. Again, give yourself a time limit, and anything left in the box after six months can be discarded.
Buy Quality Packing Materials
Wherever your unwanted ‘stuff’ is going to end up, make sure you know what it is – so put it in a clearly marked container. Even if it’s only going to be in there for a short period of time, you don’t want it to get damaged.
Hamiltons Removals have a range of declutter kits in different sizes – small, medium, and large. All the boxes are extra strong and double walled, so there shouldn’t be any risk of items falling out or being damaged in storage or transit. Tape, marker pens and inventory sheets are all included in the price. The bubble-wrap is also easi-tear for simpler packing.
These packing materials, which are put together at our Harleston base on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, can all be ordered at our online shop.
Safe Storage from Hamiltons Removals
If, after all that, you still haven’t decided what to do with some of your decluttered items, why not put them into self storage until you reach a decision?
Hamiltons Removals have two safe storage sites near Diss, at Harleston (rooms for smaller items) and Aldeby (units for bigger items) on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Both of these sites are protected by CCTV, and your items will be securely locked. If you would like to know more about our self storage services, click here or call us on 01379 855203.
Five Reasons Why Self Storage is Still Booming
The self-storage industry is still going strong – and that’s official. The latest annual survey by the Self Storage Association UK (SSAUK) has painted an optimistic picture of the industry’s future.
The survey shows that more than four-fifths of the available space in the UK’s storage facilities (82.3%) is now let, up around 6% on the previous year, and one of the highest percentage increases on record.
Hamiltons Removals operate two secure self storage units in the heart of East Anglia, and we take a keen interest in all issues affecting the industry. Here we look at some of the key reasons why self storage has been thriving over the past 12 months.
People Are Still Moving House
Various Stamp Duty holidays announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak have allowed home buyers to pay no tax on properties valued under £500,000 for almost a year already. As a result of this financial incentive aimed at kick-starting the economy, more than 100,000 home were being sold each month up to March 2021.
With more homes being sold, this has invariably meant that more people had possessions they needed to store while they were between homes or hadn’t decided what to do with them yet.
There’s Increased Working from Home
With people being encouraged to work more from home, this has created a need for dedicated office space at home. This pressure on space has resulted in possessions, especially larger items such as furniture, needing to be moved out to make way for office desks and homeschooling areas.
Hamiltons two Safe N Stored sites have furniture storage units that are ideal for those in Diss, Thetford, Stowmarket, Bury St Edmunds and further afield looking to make a little extra space at home.
There’s Other People in the House Too
University students have also encouraged to learn online, with doing this from the family home rather than on campus. This also applied to primary and secondary school children as well because many schools were shut during the period of the survey.
Youngsters, like adults, needed dedicated areas to work at home. This meant self-storage was again a useful solution for many families who needed to create some extra space.
The Other Life Events
People have also been taking advantage of the pandemic to do all the home improvement projects they have been putting off. And, with the survey showing that people renovating their homes were three times more likely to use self storage, that often meant putting items into self storage while the painting, decorating and building was carried out.
Also, people are still suffering bereavements in the family or are getting divorced. Both of these domestic upheavals often meaning that possessions need to go into storage before they are disposed of, sold or taken to their new home. The SSAUK survey showed a death in the family is the most common life event where people needed to use self storage.
Business Trade is Booming Too
In order to meet with social distancing requirements, there has been increased demand from businesses needing to make more space in their workplaces or stores. Some businesses helped the NHS by storing PPE and other equipment.
There was also increased demand from online retailers who could no longer get ‘just in time’ stock as a result of the pandemic and Brexit border slowdowns.
Secure Self Storage in East Anglia from Hamiltons Removals
We operate two Safe N Stored secure self storage sites in East Anglia, at Harleston and Aldeby, both on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.
The Harleston site, which has a number of self storage rooms of different sizes, is currently open Monday to Friday from 09:15am – 17:15pm (call our sales team if you want to visit outside these hours). The premises are protected around the clock by CCTV cameras and alarms which are linked to Norfolk Police.
The Aldeby site has self-storage containers from 5’ to 20’ in size; this site also stores larger items such as caravans, motorbikes and trailers. The containers are also protected by CCTV and have both secure key fob entry and high-security padlocks.
If you would like to know more, call us on 01379 855203 or click here.