An inventory makes itmuch easier to organise, memorise, and access items in your self-storage unit.With good inventorying skills, you can reduce the chances of missing ormisplacing your stored items. Whether you’re decluttering, holding up yourbelongings while moving cities, or setting up a new distribution centre, aninventory can help you keep it all together.
What’s more, yourinventory will serve as your map for finding and retrieving your items quicklyand easily. Here’s a step-by-step guide to keeping a well-rounded inventory foryour storage unit:
Go foran Early Start
One of the majorobstacles to good inventorying is the overwhelm. There’s probably just too muchto account for within a short period of time. But one way around thisimpediment is starting early. Once you’ve arranged for the self-storage unitand the move, you should swing into inventorying action immediately.
Organisein Categories
Start your inventorying with a formula for categorising items. You cancategorise by rooms, boxes, or the nature of items. For instance, you can createdifferent categories for wooden furniture, clothing, frail items, breakables,etc. It’s also advisable to create a category for things you need to discard.
Createyour Master List
Now, you can create a list and populate each category with correspondingitems. Ideally, you should use a spreadsheet. Compared to a paper list, aspreadsheet makes it easier to edit your inventory and also save multiplecopies on different devices or cloud storage. That way, you can easily accessand make changes to your inventory whenever you need to.
Visualiseyour Storage Space
In the same vein, you should also visualise your storage unit in itsentirety. This will help you easily identify exactly where any specific item iskept. You might not be able to take clean photo showing the position of everyitem, so it’s advisable to draw a map instead.
We’re not talking about a sophisticated map here – just a doodle showingthe four walls of the storage unit and the positioning of items or boxes.The map can be labelled with the names of items, categories, or boxes.
Updateyour List to Reflect any Recent Changes
Now, you have a well-detailed inventory that can help you prevent lossesand damages to your belongings. The next step is to maintain this list and makesure it serves its purpose well at all times. You don’t want your inventorylist to mislead or confuse you, so it’s important to update it regularly.
Ideally, you should update your list the moment you move something in orout of your storage unit for any reason. While updating your list, you shouldnote down the reasons for any changes you make – not just add or delete items –for future references. Also, you need to double-check your list after updatingit to make sure everything is accurately stated.