I’ve heard more than a few people talking about their landlords yanking the rug from under their feet, be it selling the place they live in or deciding that Airbnb might be profitable for a month or two before finding another unsuspecting tenant.

Not cool I know, but these are the times we live in good people. All this means there is plenty of moving to be done over the festive season, and this often also means the frantic search for storage space must begin.

We’re here to drop five helpful tips at your feet. Use them, don’t use them, like I said we’ll leave them here.

1. Use Boxes
Using proper boxes that are both a uniform size and reinforced ensures that they won’t fall over and damage your valuables while in storage. You can borrow old boxes or even find some behind grocery stores, but these are often damaged or contain old food items on them. It really is a case of the the more you invest the better your valuables will be taken care of while in storage.

2. Rent A Van
Yes you can make all the trips in your car and yes this is cheaper, but who has two days to make all those trips and what about the fuel cost?  You can drastically reduce the number of trips, and thus the time it takes to store your goodies, by hiring a van or trailer. We should mention at this point that our friends at Stor-Age give every customer one FREE van trip using their vehicles but more on that later.

3. Ask For Help
Manual labour! Moving, packing and storing requires heavy lifting and a lot of it. Trying to move everything yourself just adds to the stress so it’s time to call in the troops. Teamwork doesn’t seem work – dad quote of the day.

If you need some leverage in order to get you friends to help you move offers of freebies or dinner always do the trick. That and blackmail, I find that can be pretty efficient too.

4. Shop Around
Choose your storage company carefully. The most expensive may not be the best and the cheapest may actually be the cheapest for a reason. It is important to visit the self storage company you choose or at least ask around, everyone has a story to tell.

Look out for a clean facility with good access control and adequate security measures. Remember if they are not looking after their own property they probably won’t look after yours.

5. Take It Easy
It is easy to become overwhelmed with everything that needs to be moved. Arranging transport, arranging storage, arranging labour and finding boxes can quickly become the bane of one’s existence.

Try and start as early as possible and work on only one room at a time. That way you get a sense of reward with each room you finish – one step closer to walking out that door.

Now we mentioned Stor-Age earlier and there’s a good reason for that. These guys and girls have done so well for themselves that they recently became the first storage company to list on the JSE, no mean feat at all.

They’ve also been kind enough to hook our readers up with a pretty insane special – your first month’s storage costing the princely sum of R1. I mean you could pop your stuff in there this December, find a place to live and be out by January for less than the price of a loosie.

If that doesn’t tick some boxes you’re on your own out there. We wish you luck…