Category Archives: Lifestyle

Outdoor Living

file000612558478It’s almost May, and if you’ve been cooped up all winter (and even if you haven’t), it’s time to spend some time outdoors. These days, people are taking their outdoor living spaces to new heights of luxury and style – no more perching on a flimsy webbed lawn chair with a paper plate balanced on your knee. Now people serve pizza rustica from their wood fire ovens to guests around elegantly laid tables lit by outdoor chandeliers, or gaze at the stars while getting cozy by the fire pit with a snifter of brandy.

Outdoor furniture in particular has made incredible advances, with beautiful and comfortable pieces that rival the couch and chairs in your living room.  The most common materials for outdoor furniture frames are wood, wicker, aluminum, and wrought iron. Wood has a casual, natural look, is fairly easy to maintain, and can always be made new again with a fresh coat of paint. There’s nothing like a classic Adirondack Continue reading

Preserving Priceless Memories

camcorderIf you have a storage unit, chances are, buried in one of those boxes are some old home movies. Maybe they are on VHS tape, or Super 8, or maybe you even have some reel-to-reel family heirlooms from the 1940’s or ’50s. You could do worse than keeping them in a closed, air-conditioned environment – but you could do better, too.

You might want to consider a transfer process that will allow you to preserve and pass along those priceless memories. But wait a minute, you say, every five to ten years there’s a new format. What good did it do me to transfer my Dad’s reel-to-reel movies to VHS back in 1995? Now I’m stuck with another outdated format. Continue reading

Who Needs Healthcare When You Have Shelf Space

With all the talk about healthcare and who’s in charge or should be in charge – sometimes we need to look to ourselves to take charge. One area we can do just that is by creating a less hazardous home.

Think of a clutter-free home as a great way to stay healthy by avoiding accidents. Countless people are injured every year when they trip over objects in the home or garage – objects that would normally be safely tucked out of the way – if only there were enough room. Continue reading

You Live Where?

Our self-storage location managers are often asked how much will fit into a 5×5, a 10×15, or 10×20,  storage unit. Sometimes they answer by saying that you can fit the contents of a 1 bedroom apartment into it, or it that a certain size will accommodate a 2 bedroom house. Well, the way things are trending around the world, we may need to come up with some different descriptions.

What used to be touted as “NY’s Smallest Apartment” or “London’s Tiniest Flat”, now have a name of their own – micro apartments. Wikepedia defines these accommodations as being between
150 and 300 square feet. But do a search on the Internet and you’ll quickly find them a lot smaller, too. Continue reading