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Self storage can be useful at any stage of the moving process. Some people use our self storage units for storing possessions prior to a house move, some of our customers use self storage whilst in temporary accommodation, and others use storage when the move is complete, and they want to free up space in their new home.

Moving can be a stressful experience. One of the key ways to help manage stress when moving is preparation. Once the move is confirmed and contracts have been exchanged, do all the things you can in advance, such as switching your broadband, registering with a new doctor, advising people of your new address, and planning what furniture will go in what rooms. This should mean that on the actual moving day things will feel more under control. We have pulled together a moving home checklist which we hope you find useful and which covers some of the things you might not have accounted for!

Self storage can also be useful to alleviate stress. By storing possessions prior to the sale, you will have a clutter free home for viewings. Similarly, if you are going to be living in temporary accommodation whilst a move is finalised, then having the peace of mind that all your belongings are safe and secure is a big reassurance. Before you move, take the time to work out what you are going to take to your new home, what you no longer need and can sell or give to charity, and what you want to keep but do not need on a day to day basis, which is where self-storage can be useful. This will also make unpacking less stressful as you have already decluttered before you move.

If you or your clients are moving and looking for self-storage in the Hastings and St Leonards area, then please contact us as we offer flexible, secure storage units from 15 to 180 square feet, across six locations.

As more and more employees are undergoing a gradual, and in many cases, partial return to the office, now is the perfect time to get organised at work, especially if you are going to have a hybrid model of home working and office working for the foreseeable future.

With up to 18 months of home working for many employees, it is likely that you have not had much time in the office over the past year and a half. Here are some of our tips for transitioning back to office working and maintaining a more organised work space.

• Tidy your work space

On your return to the office you will probably by greeted by piles of unopened mail, folders and adhoc paperwork. Take half a day to clear your desk by throwing away any junk mail, filing documents that are no longer required, and sorting through existing paperwork to sort out what is no longer needed. Self storage is the perfect solution for archiving documents that you do not need on a daily basis, but still need to keep for legal purposes.

Spending time tidying and organising your work space at the start will ultimately save you lots of time in the long-term.

• Go paperless

Use this fresh start in the office to eliminate paperwork as much as you can. Eliminating paper, or almost going paperless, is an easy way to physically declutter your office, and means as you work between office and home you are not wasting time searching for paper documents, which may be in the other location and better to be stored electronically.

• Organise your desk at the end of every day

Spend five minutes at the end of every day tidying and organising your desk, whether it is in the office or at home. Take with you any items needed if at work or at home the following day. This means you are commencing work every day with a clear and tidy desk and this will help you keep on top of managing a hybrid office and home working model.

• Planning is key

If you are going to be working from both the office and home, then plan your diary – some tasks will be better performed in an office, where you will have colleagues close to hand, whereas some tasks that require full focus may be better carried out at home. Keep on top of schedules, both at work and home, so you are aligning office days with key team members, and you have time at home when there is going to be fewer distractions.

We work with many local businesses, helping them with their storage needs, so please contact us to discuss our self-storage solutions for local businesses.

Create space at home and get organised with self-storage for your summer items

It is time to say good bye to summer 2021, which means that many items you have been using over the warmer times may no longer be needed. Paddling pools, patio furniture, barbeques, camping equipment, summer sports gear, outdoor games and more, all need a home until summer 2022.

If space at home, either inside or in outbuildings, is limited, then seasonal self-storage offers a safe, secure and cost-effective alternative for your seasonal items, whilst also helping you create space in your home, and allowing you to keep track of your items when they are not in use.

Using an Offerfair storage unit is not only convenient for storing items you don’t need on a day-to-day basis, it also means that when next summer arrives, you know exactly where they are instead of looking in lofts, garden sheds and spare bedrooms!

You can also use self-storage to make space in your wardrobes for winter jumpers, jackets and accessories, by packing and storing summer clothes away.  All of your items will be in a safe and warm environment ensuring they don’t get damp in the winter months.

To make the best use of your Offerfair self-storage unit, we recommend that you pack and label everything in boxes (where appropriate) and make an inventory list of what you are storing.

Depending on how much you have to store until next summer, we have a range of secure storage units from 15 – 180 square feet across three locations in Hastings and St Leonards, so you can head into autumn knowing your summer belongings are safely stored away until the next year.

As always, please contact us to discuss your seasonal self-storage requirements or to make a booking.

Self storage can be an extremely versatile tool for those wanting to grow their business. Renting warehouse and retail or office space costs money and with the rapid increase in the number of people starting their own business, then self storage usage is on the rise.

It is not only new/start-up businesses that benefit from the cost saving and convenience benefits of self storage. Renting a self storage unit has also become a popular choice for many established SMEs and larger businesses who need flexible storage space for their operations, or those looking to expand and grow, as unit sizes can be upgraded or downsized at any time.

Here are some of the ways in which an Offerfair self storage unit can contribute to your business growth:

Reduce Office Space

With remote working from home becoming more and more popular, businesses are using self storage to store their goods, equipment, paperwork and more, meaning they can reduce the space they need, in turn reducing their rental costs.

Competitive Costs

At Offerfair our units start at just £10.92 per week (15 sq foot unit) making them much cheaper than renting a warehouse or commercial property. You can view our full price list here. There’s also no overheads such as electricity, gas, water rates or council tax with an Offerfair self storage unit.

Convenient

We have six self storage sites across locations in Hastings and St Leonards, meaning wherever you are in the area, you will have convenient access to a site. Our pay as you go, flexible short or long-term contracts (which just require one weeks’ notice to cancel when you want to vacate) make self storage a much more flexible option than business rentals. You can also upgrade or downsize your self storage at any time to reflect seasonal changes or growth in your business.

More Productive Office Space

Self storage is the perfect solution for archiving paperwork or extra stock that is not needed on a daily basis which creates more space at your premises and leads to a less cluttered and more productive working environment.

Enhanced Security

Storing items in a self storage unit can often be more secure than leaving them in your office or workspace. At Offerfair, we not only have CCTV security across all our sites, every self storage unit is individually alarmed to give you full peace of mind. We also give all new customers a free padlock for their unit.

At Offerfair we work with many local small and medium sized businesses and start-ups, so if you are looking to grow your business, or are an online seller looking for space to keep your stock, then contact us today to see how we can help you.

If you want to make the best use of your Offerfair self storage unit, we highly recommend that you create an inventory list. Keeping your self storage unit organised with an inventory is invaluable for keeping track of belongings and avoiding endless searching for specific items.

Here are our top tips for creating a self storage inventory list:

• Start by making a list of all the items you’re storing in your unit.Keep your list updated on a regular basis, as soon as you add or remove an item. The list should be updated with the reason and date of removal or the name, description and date of addition.
• Make a note of the value of each item – whilst it’s highly unlikely that you’ll need to file an insurance claim, having an up-to-date inventory of all items stored will ensure any potential insurance claim is straightforward.
• Categorise your belongings – depending on what you are storing, some people identify their items by type, room or box number.
• Create a map of your storage unit’s layout and where categories of items or each item is.
• Take pictures so you’ve got a visual snapshot of what you’re storing.
• Store your inventory digitally using a spreadsheet or similar.

Creating an inventory list doesn’t take a lot of time but is one of the best things you can do to make your self storage as easy and straightforward as possible!

At Offerfair we have unit sizes ranging from 15 – 180 square feet and can help with all your self storage requirements, so contact us today to find out more.

Create space in the office with our self-storage archive tips

Even in today’s digital age, many businesses have lots of paperwork taking up valuable office space. Some of these documents may be required to be stored for data protection and legal reasons for a certain period of time, eg you must keep records for 6 years from the end of the last company financial year they relate to. However, a lot of companies struggle to find the space to store paper files, and this can result in a cluttered and disorganised working environment.

For those businesses who don’t have sufficient storage space to archive physical copies in the office, many have found that renting a self-storage unit is an ideal way to store essential documents that can’t be thrown away but aren’t needed on a day-to-day basis.

To help you with storing and archiving your business documents, here are a few of our top tips:

1. Establish what you need to archive (ie those that you need to keep for legal or data requirements) and then discard the rest by shredding (if necessary).
2. Once you’ve got the files and documents you are going to store and archive, file them in a logical manner eg by date or project.
3. Label your boxes and keep an index sheet to help you find specific files quickly and easily.
4. Store paperwork that you’re likely to need more regular access to at the front of your storage unit.

At Offerfair, we offer various sized units which are all clean, dry (important for paper documents), easily accessible, individually alarmed and covered by CCTV security, meaning they are perfect for storing confidential documents that you need to keep, but don’t need cluttering your office. Think of a self-storage unit as like having an offsite filing room!

If you need help with archiving and storage solutions for work documents, then please visit our website, contact us or call us on 01424 718 169, and we can talk through the options.

How Self-Storage can help when Downsizing for Retirement

When you retire, downsizing makes a lot of sense. Any children will have left home, their rooms are empty, and the maintenance of a large family home and garden is getting harder. Rather than spending your retirement in a half empty house, many people use this opportunity to move somewhere more manageable, and at the same time release some equity to enjoy in retirement.

One of the main barriers for people contemplating downsizing is where they are going to store all their ‘stuff’, which they’ve accumulated over the years!  Whilst downsizing is a great opportunity to have a good clear-out of items that are no longer used or needed, there will inevitably be some items that may want to be kept, but which there may not be room for at a new, smaller home.

This is where self-storage plays a part. Perhaps they’re sentimental items that are not needed on a day to day basis but don’t want to be parted with; or perhaps there’s less storage space at a new home so somewhere is needed to store seasonal items; or maybe not all the furniture will fit into a new home but some may be needed again.

Renting a storage facility will allow your new downsized home to remain clutter free, whilst you can rest easy in the knowledge that your belongings are safe in one of our secure self-storage units.

We can help with all your self-storage downsizing requirements, so get in touch with us today. We have unit sizes ranging from 15 – 180 square feet, and you can rent our units from as little as four weeks, with just one week’s notice when you need to leave.

Whether you’re a local resident wanting to know what’s on this summer, or one of our many customers from further afield who use Offerfair for their self-storage requirements and combine it with a trip to the south coast, here are some of our favourite things to do in Hastings and St Leonards in the summer:

• St Clements Caves – Deep in the heart of Hastings’ West Hill lies the Smugglers Adventure, acres of caverns that conceal the history of smuggling, and feature more than seventy life-size characters, interactive displays, eerie lighting, sound effects and dramatic recreations.
• Hastings Pier – Dating back to 1872, Hastings Piers runs for 280 metres into the English Channel. It was damaged by fire in 2010, and the subsequent renovation project won the coveted Stirling Prize for architecture in 2017. The pier houses a state-of-the-art exhibition in ‘the Deck’ visitor centre, a café with scenic view, plus family workshops, live music and street performers in summer.
• Hastings Castle – On the West Hill is the remains of Hastings’ Norman motte-and-bailey castle and which dates from the reign of Henry III in the 13^th About a third of the structure is still standing, including a cloistered chapel and dungeons.
• Hastings Country Park – Just a short walk out of town to the east, albeit uphill, the Hastings Country Park has 660 acres of ancient woodland, cliffs and heathland and is also home to a Bronze Age fort.
• The Shipwreck Museum – A multisensory museum which charts some of the many thousands of vessels that have been shipwrecked off the south cost of South East England, including Anne, a 17th century warship from the reign of Charles II, and Amsterdam, a Dutch East Indianman wrecked in 1749.
• Cliff Railways – Hastings has two funicular railways travelling up and down its sandstone cliffs. The older of the two is 150 metre West Hill Lift, which opened in 1891, and serves Hastings Castle and St Clements Cave. The East Hill Lift, opened in 1902, takes you up to Hastings Country Park and claims to be the UK’s steepest funicular railway, with a gradient of 78%.
• Fishermen’s Museum – A small independent museum dedicated to the fishing industry and maritime history of Hastings, including visiting the deck of the last Hastings’ sailing lugger Enterprise, built in 1912.
• Fairlight Hall Open Gardens – Taking place on two weekends throughout the summer (25/26 June, 27/28 August 2021), this is an opportunity to visit Fairlight Hall gardens and its magnificent horticultural sites.
• Old Town Carnival Week – Running from 30 July to 9 August 2021, this is a week-long series of exciting events from open houses to walking routs, art shows to historical talks, live music, street parties and culminating in a Grand Carnival procession.
• St Leonards Festival – Taking place on 14 August 2021, a free family fun day by the sea has something for everyone, including street arts, market, live bands carnival parade and food.

These are some of our favourite things to do in Hastings and the surrounding areas, let us know what yours are!

Please check with individual attractions and events as to any changes to opening hours and restrictions on visiting during the ongoing Covid pandemic.

Are you a student look for self-storage? Offerfair can help.

It is the end of the academic year, and this means summer holidays for students all over the country. Summer holidays might mean moving back to your parents for the summer, staying with friends or travelling abroad.

Whatever your plans for the summer holidays, the chances are you will have accumulated a lot of stuff over the past year and will need to store it somewhere temporarily over the summer.

Whilst the cheapest option is to move your belongings back to your parents, it is often not the most convenient or practical alternative, especially if you are going to have to return everything back to your university residence in just a few months’ time. This is where self-storage can help.

Self-storage allows you to securely store your belongings over the summer. All you need to do is pack up your belongings, take them to a secure storage facility like Offerfair, and then forget about them until September.

At Offerfair we have six self-storage sites across locations in Hastings and St Leonards, making our storage facilities ideal for students in Sussex and Kent, plus even London as our rates are so competitive. We also offer flexible pay as you go contracts so you will only pay for the time you need self-storage.

If you are a student looking for temporary self-storage over the summer, then talk to us today to find out about our short-term self storage options. We recognise that students are on a tight budget and you will be surprised at how cost effective self-storage at Offerfair can be!