Trying to move heavy or large items can be hard on your body, especially if you are trying to move them by hand. When lifting the items you can put an unwanted pressure onto your back and this could cause a serious injury, which could take months to get over and possible keep you off work.

To make sure that you protect your back there are a range of industrial trucks available and they are capable of manoeuvring a selection of different items. If you use industrial trucks you are also capable of moving a larger quantity of items in one go; this save a lot of time and energy.

There are sack trucks, which are smaller storage units that are easy to steer. There are also industrial trucks that are designed especially to move large or heavy items up and down the stairs. If you use a standard sack truck up and down the stairs, you could cause an accident and the items will fall off of the truck and break.

There are a range of trolleys and these are better units as you can distribute a larger weight around the trolley, but they are harder to manoeuvre. For a larger industrial solution there are pallet trucks and these are ideal for the workplace. Pallet trucks are one of the most expensive industrial trucks on the market, but they are essential for any business to make sure that your employees do not injure themselves and issue an injury claim against the company.

In your workplace there are many different areas of the business that requires a storage system.

In the office, it is best if you have a clear desk to work from and this is where storing all of the documents and files on storage racks helps. Having storage racks organised to suit your businesses makes it easy to locate any documents you may need to refer back too.

If you have expensive or important items in the business it is best to keep them locked away until needed, so you know they are safe and secure at all times. You can lock the items in storage cabinets.

As a business there is a lot of paperwork, be it current documents that you use regularly or older documents that you need to have archived. There are racking units especially designed for archive facilities.

Not only is there paperwork to store there are stationary supplies, cleaning products, materials to manufacture your products and books and catalogues.

Some businesses have to store hazardous materials and substances. As a business it is your responsibility to make sure that they are kept safe and kept in a cabinet that is clearly labelled and easily identified by all personnel. These cabinets are specially designed to make sure that if any of the contents are spilt they will keep the liquid contained in them, so that they can be cleaned up according, without causing any harm.

All storage systems come in a range of sizes and as they vary in price you can be sure to find a unit to accommodate your storage budget.

If you have a shed in your garden, this is where you may store lots of belongings and you need to make sure that you have racking units in the shed so you can store as many items as possible.

The racking can be placed around all of the walls of the shed, and they come in a range of sizes so that you can find the units to suit your needs. When you pick the storage system you need to make surethey are manufactured with a material to withstand the cold and damp conditions.

There are some items in your shed that you need to protect, such as any electrical items, as they need to avoid the damp, or anything edible as you may find that mice or rats could get into the shed.

This is where plastic storage boxes can be useful as you can put your belongings in there and seal them with a lid, so that they are protected and nothing can get in or out of the box without removing the lid.

There are plastic storage boxes that come in a range of sizes. They also come in different colours so that you can organise your shed into colour coded categories, which is practical if you have a large number of storage boxes.

The storage boxes can be placed onto the shelves or the can be stacked on top of each other. Some have wheels on so that the storage boxes can be moved with ease.

An old saying that still holds true is ‘prevention is better than cure’. Many emergency repairs around the house could be avoided by carrying out regular maintenance checks of the various items that need to looked at.

Draw up a list of things that need to be checked. Shelving and racking, for instance. Make sure they are still securely fixed to the wall. If one has worked loose, try fitting a larger wall plug and a longer screw.

Plumbing checks.

Stop cocks can jam because they haven’t been used for a while. Two or three times a year, fully close them then open them again. A stiff handle should work loose after a couple of turns. A tap that keeps dripping even after being fully closed needs a new washer.

Electrical checks.

Never work on live equipment. If you are working on an appliance, unplug it first. If it is permanently wired equipment, turn off the power at the mains. Light fittings should be checked for signs of wear. Extractor fans should be cleaned regularly.

Central heating checks.

With gas fired central heating, if a radiator is not heating up properly, there is probably air trapped inside which needs to be bled out. Use the radiator key to slowly turn the valve until the air begins to escape, as soon as the hissing stops, close it quickly to prevent water escaping. A small container such as a bowl will be useful to catch any that does.

It is likely that nearly everybody would want to store items they need to use in their work vehicles or industrial trucks to make them easily accessible while keeping them safe from damage when being transported to whatever job needs to be done. The last thing an engineer or tradesman wants is to arrive at his destination to find a component or a tool has been damaged or broken.

There are many racks and storage units for use in the interior of vans and are designed to be sturdy and flexible. Some storage racks are designed to be adjustable, making them easy to fit almost every van and have a wide range of combinations of shelves and racks. This will enable the tradesman to pick and choose which combination he finds the most suitable to help suit his carriage and storage requirements.

Heavy duty storage racking is the preferred choice of service engineers, for instance, it is relatively shallow but is still able to store a good number of items with its compact design and also allows a great deal of floor space to still be accessible to the owner should he need to store other items in his van.

There is also a range of strong heavy duty storage racks available on the market that are designed to cope with heavier workloads. This particular system is perfect for van owners who require deeper shelves. The racking units are also ideal for carrying heavier tools and equipment.

Every so often, the lounge becomes a battle zone. Old newspapers and magazines will sometimes be spearheading the offensive, protected by the insistence of various household members that they had not yet finished reading that magazine or the crossword puzzle in last week’s newspaper needs to be completed.

It is essential that storage is considered as soon as possible in order to maintain organisation within any environment, as this will assist in giving all items a designated place to be found. By simply creating ease through storage, people can become less stressed as they avoid having to plough through all manner of items before reaching what they need.

Most councils now provide a collection service for anything made out of paper, and even those annoying catalogues that keep arriving from a mail-order company you only used once, several years ago, can be condemned to the recycling bag.

Drawers, cupboards, shelving units and paper racks are all potential hiding places. Old bills, bank statements, mortgage and insurance documents for example will sometimes lurk here. Any kind of paperwork that you know may be needed in the future could be stored in a box or container that was to have been thrown away and stored in the loft.

It is also a good idea is to use a marker pen to clearly label the box and what its contents are before consigning it to its temporary resting place. The inventive DIYer could use odds and ends of wood or other materials to build storage racking into which the boxes could be organised.

Remember that magazines, especially hobbyist ones might be of interest to somebody else and there are plenty of second-hand shops run by various charities that will be able to sell them on. Set aside a separate bag to sort these into.

Unfortunately, with shelving units there are safety issues that need to be addressed. It needs only a bit of common sense and a little extra time and effort to ensure your assembled shelves or shelving systems do not cause any problems where safety is concerned. When assembling or making wooden shelves, goggles and safety shoes should be worn as well as appropriate clothing.

Metal shelving units, in particular, can be a safety hazard. Indeed, in the industrial sector, lack of bracing makes their use illegal. This, however, can be fixed by adding some way of restraining the unit. Attaching them securely to a wall would probably be the least expensive option. Since racks are mostly supplied without enough bracing anybody bumping into them heavily may cause it to fold over sideways and the result can be tragic.

Unstable shelving units that are not against a wall may very well topple over and cause a serious injury to anyone caught in their fall. It is recommended that a strip of wood is attached to their top and is connected to another shelving unit or secured to the nearest wall.

If metal racking is fixed separately from other units or the wall, it must be well braced to make a totally rigid unit. Any movement in the joints at all will eventually cause the bolts to loosen and come undone.

Wooden shelving units must always be attached to a wall or firmly braced if you intend to use them as a free-standing unit.

If you are a connoisseur of the grape, or just an enthusiastic amateur, the one thing you will need is a place to store your collection of wine. Storage racks for the wine are obviously essential and I will deal with them in a moment.

Those of you who already have a cellar need not concern yourself too much, but for those who do not, it is a major worry that the wine will not achieve its full potential and stay in perfect condition. For these goals to be realised, you will need to store the wine in cellar conditions identical to those in a real cellar.

These conditions are between 12 or 13 degrees Celsius without fluctuation, the humidity must be from 60% to 80%. There ideally, must be also be protection form light and vibration. A typical solution would be a wine cabinet or a walk in wine room complete with cellar conditioners.

Once you have decided where your fine wine collection is to be stored, you must now consider in what it should be held. A typical wine storage rack will made of wood or steel. The wood, oak or mahogany, for instance, would be treated with preservative, especially useful in cellars which have high humidity. If you opt for a wall-mounted storage rack, remember that a sturdy shelf will be needed to support it.

There will usually be standard sizes of racks available, able to hold between one and four dozen bottles and you may add to these as your collection grows.

Tomatoes need a regular drink of water otherwise they will develop split skins and blossom end rot. They are not on their own in this, since all the plants in your greenhouse will suffer if you skimp on keeping them watered on a daily basis. If you have the greenhouse some distance away from a water supply, then carrying watering cans to and from the greenhouse becomes a real chore and you might be tempted to skip a day or two.

So, once you have built your greenhouse, fitted it out with shelves, storage racks and all the other items you need, consider the potential problems with keeping your plants watered on a regular basis to ensure a good crop. If your greenhouse has a gutter, perhaps a water butt would be a possible solution. Although even without a gutter, the butt would still collect plenty of rainwater, something of which Britain is very rarely short. An old dustbin would be ideal for the job, especially if your local council has just provided you with a wheeled bin but refused to take away the old bin. Incidentally the bin could also be used to make compost from garden waste, leaves, grass cuttings and fruit and vegetable peelings. You will need to punch holes into the bin, since the air must get to the waste and encourage the decomposition process.

Other systems are also available, automatic water reservoirs will even allow you to take a few days off. The bag drip watering system is also quite popular.

Over 25% of accidents in workplaces each year are caused by incorrect manual handling techniques. Transporting, supporting heavy loads by hand, for example.

Fractures or strains, especially of the back, are not uncommon and most of these injuries could have been avoided with the use of correct techniques.

Other ways of minimising accidents include to redesign or automate the task to cut down the amount of manual handling needed, thorough risk assessment of the task and as far as possible reduce the risk of injury when manual handling is unavoidable. The in-house Health and Safety officer should carry out the risk assessment since they are going to be more familiar with the work being carried out there.

For instance, a job involving the stacking of shelves, the H & S officer would need to consider factors such as:

•    The height of the job and shelves or racking from the ground
•    The surface upon which the access equipment will rest. For example, the shelves or a partition wall
•    Whether the surface will be strong enough to take the weight of the equipment and the workers
•    The condition of the ground upon which the access equipment will rest
•    Lighting conditions in the work area

The job should then be carefully planned out. Heavier items should be stored lower down; other workers should be kept away from the area to avoid injuries from falling objects. Tools that will be used frequently should be kept close at hand and easily accessible. Frequent breaks, especially if working up a ladder, should be taken.