As the Cost of Square Footage Increases, Don’t Waste Valuable Space (and Protect Your Identity, Too)

Paying for external storage? Using up your space unnecessarily? Here’s how to assess your needs and save your money (and your identity).

You live in your home. You pay good money for your space. If you own a business, you probably spend a significant amount of your revenue on a place to run the ship. The fact of the matter is, square footage of any space is not exactly cheap. Costs aren’t going to come down for space, so if you’re paying for your space and using it to hold onto old paperwork, maybe it’s time to rethink what needs to stay and what needs to go. Your bottom like will thank you in the end. Here’s how assessing your space and storage needs can give you a boost (and help protect your identity, too).

Holding Onto Documents Uses Up Space Needlessly

Ask yourself, “do I need this?” Be honest. Is that ticket stub to the concert you attended three years ago really necessary? Do you have a stack of important documents for work? If yes, then file them away. If not, add them to your shred pile.  If you can’t part with it but need the info on the sheet, scan it and put it on an external hard drive.

What tends to happen with trash is that we stash it away somewhere, thinking “I’ll get to that,” and never do. Throw out everything that isn’t absolutely needed for work or home. If it contains sensitive information, shred it.

Paying for Storage Is Not Always a Wise Investment

According to The New York Times, the U.S. has 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space. 50% of renters are simply spending money on storage to hold what won’t fit in their homes. According to Cost Helper, storage units can cost $40-$50 per month for a 5-by-5-foot unit and $75-$140 per month for a 10-by-15-foot unit. Of course, we can’t forget our office spaces and homes. You’re already paying good money to live or work in a space, so why are you using your hard-earned dollars to hold onto items unnecessarily? Our homes become storage spaces. Our offices become full of old documents. When it gets to be too much, we turn to external storage, paying for a space that is not exactly necessary.

Self-storage units can make a great deal of sense for small-business owners, but not always. As a business owner, you have to keep paperwork for years, but knowing retention rates can help you figure out exactly what it is you need.

No matter the square footage you currently have, whether it’s for business or personal,  it really comes down to being smart about storage and making your space as efficient as possible. Consider doing a purge of old documents, but make sure you don’t leave them at the curb for wandering hands to take. Legal Shred can come straight to your storage facility, home, or place of business and shred right on site so you never have to haul it out yourself.

Contact us today for routine service options, and of course, one-time purge services.  If you are looking for help organizing your space, contact our good friends at NAPO, the National Association of Professional Organizers.

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