If you are a car owner and you own a garage you should be sure to park your car in it. Obviously, your car will be safer but you will get a cheaper insurance premium as it is kept in a locked and secure area.

Your garage is also an area that you could use to store those items that you cannot find a home for inside your house. It could be large garden furniture, bikes, tools, a BBQ, children’s toys, decorating equipment or tables and chairs. There could also be smaller items such as smaller tools, paint pots and car washing equipment.

When you are trying to store a number of items as well as your car you need a suitable storage system. This means you can fit all of your belongings in and keep them organised so that they are easy to find when needed.

If you have larger items to store, there are storage racks that are designed and treated especially to withstand the potentially cold and damp conditions of the garage so that they do not rust or corrode. The shelves that are on the storage racks can be adjusted to heights to suit your requirements.

If you have smaller items then there are single shelves that can be attached to the wall at a suitable height. With the correct fixings they can be hung above the car so that they do not restrict the space that you need to park your vehicle.

In your garage, greenhouse or garden shed you will probably keep all manner of expensive tools, gardening implements, electrical lawn mowers and so on. It is a good idea therefore to invest in sturdy metal storage cabinets fitted with a heavy duty padlock for the tools and implements. A Passive Infra Red (PIR) light outside the house will also act as a deterrent for a potential thief. It is probably a better idea to use the shed or garage for items such as strimmers and lawn mowers.

The keys for the out-buildings can be stored in a purpose built steel safe which has the advantage of a digital lock. You will need to use a four digit number that you can easily remember. Please do not use family birth dates or any other numbers that a thief may know if they have accessed your personal details. Although this is an obvious point, it still happens, do not write the number down and leave it lying about the house.

If you are planning to build a garden shed and plan to make it into a garden office or studio with storage or shelving areas and therefore a habitable building, you may or may not need planning permission. It might be possible to build your studio or office space under Permitted Development laws which permit the householder to make small additions to his home that will not need full planning approval, but these laws vary across the country so be sure to check first.

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.

There are still some industrial and commercial businesses that use time clocks and time cards. Depending upon the size of the business, different time and clock cards are available to suit most applications.

There is the time recorder ideal for the smaller business. Typically they will be robust and will have such features as:
• A clear, easily readable analogue display
• They will print as many as six columns on a time card which would then be stored in wall mounted storage racks
• The time card will be automatically fed through the clock
• They will be able to automatically adjust forward and backwards for the British Summer Time (BST) and Greenwich Meantime (GMT) changes
• It will be possible to either mount them on the wall or on a table. This is especially useful as wall mounting will be preferred where space is limited

A more expensive model might suit larger businesses and would usually have all the standard features of the cheaper model, including a storage rack for the time cards, as well as:
• A time signal to be used when bells are required
• Multi-coloured printing is available
• The time clock can be programmed to record and print in/out movements of employees

If job costing will be needed, the perfect solution for this is a date and time stamp. This model will typically have features such as:
• A precise record of time and date
• There will be several options for the print format
• A memory backup for five years

Narrow boats, although used mostly for leisure and occasionally as homes these days, were first developed as commercial transport vehicles from the 18th century onwards. Their design enabled them to be used on the extensive canal network in Britain and they were used for the storage and carriage of goods and raw materials around the country. For instance, clay from Derbyshire was taken by narrow boat to the nearby Potteries area of Stoke-on-Trent to be used in the manufacturing of their world famous pottery.

Narrow boats, on occasion, were constructed along similar lines to the much wider river barges. In spite of the similarities, it is erroneous to call a narrow boat a barge.

Until the early 20th century narrow boats were horse drawn, but with the advent of diesel or steam engines, this practice became a thing of the past. The other advantage of powered narrow boats was that they could be used to tow an unpowered boat behind them. This meant that twice the amount of goods or produce could be transported without having to double the number of crew. However the use of narrow boats for the storage and transport of cargo was already dying out.

Narrow boats, nowadays, are utilised to take holidays in and sometimes as permanent homes. Some narrow boat owners use them as a way of making money by offering trips along a canal in them or renting them out. When the weather is favourable, this can be a novel and pleasant day out.

Nothing is more annoying for than not be able to locate a small part or a fixing, for example, nails, screws, spare fuses and so on. There are a number of ways to solve this perennial problem.

The modular tilt-box storage system is one such method. It is extremely versatile in that the buyer can choose to purchase any number of storage units and they can be clipped together to suit his or her requirements.

Typically a tilt storage box or drawer will be made from clear, sturdy plastic to enable the owner to easily view its contents. The box may have a label holder to allow the user to specify which type and size of nail or screw is in that box. The drawers are removable and many units have fully enclosed housings to keep out either dust or moisture. Retaining bars are sometimes available to prevent the drawers from swinging open while the unit is being transported. The units may also be attached to a wall or work-bench surface.

Open-fronted bins are another way to keep small items together in storage and easy to find. They range in size, can be bought separately and are stackable. The bins will usually have integrated label holders. An alternative to stacking them would be to attach them to louvered panels. The panels will be attached to a wall and are normally available singly or in packs of two or more.  One benefit of the louvered panel option is that bins of various sizes may be fixed to them.

As electronic devices such as PDAs, laptop computers and mobile phones become more sophisticated, they also become more expensive. Their portability makes them prime targets for thieves. They can be protected at home using secure storage areas and the home security safe is ideally suited for this purpose.

For example; a safe with external dimensions of 18h x 43w x 37d cm and internal dimensions of 17h x 42w x 32d cm is easily concealed under the computer desk for instance, and will provide storage space for a laptop without difficulty whilst still leaving room to spare for other small but valuable electronic items, and cash and jewellery. It will normally weigh approximately 11 kg and have a volume of 24 litres. This style of safe can generally be bought for less than £100 and reputable sites offer free delivery, a definite bonus considering its weight.

Home security safes will be available in a number of different sizes for storage. Their typical insurance rating is £1,000 cash or £10,000 valuables. A quality safe will usually have features such as an electronic combination lock, back-up override key in case of lock out, be constructed of steel and have two live locking bolts. They are suitable to be bolted to the wall or floor and normally the bolts are included.

The home security safe is a major deterrent to many burglars. For a reasonably small sum of money compared to what could be lost in terms of data and material possessions, it is a worthwhile investment for security and storage.

When you think about storage, people tend to think about pallets and huge heavy items yet it is not just these larger items that need storing – in every warehouse and business there are smaller items to be kept as well and putting them on a pallet can result in lost or damaged stock as it just is not ideal.

Small parts storage is a range of really adaptable products especially designed to bring some order to the chaos that comes from storing small parts.  These can include storage items such as containers, feeder trolleys, plastic drawers and more.  Each and any of these items can be used on their own of alternatively they can be combined together to make a full storage system.  For the industrial workplace these items could include screws, nuts and bolts, or for the retail industry it could be tags, hooks and pricing items.

A great benefit of using this sort of storage system is that it makes organising these items simple enough that stock rotation or stock checking becomes a much easier task – as opposed to looking at a pile of small parts and taking a wild guess.

Using louvred panels is particularly attractive for many warehouses because these mean that containers can be hung on them – making use of valuable space that could otherwise be wasted.  Alternatively plastic drawer units can be stored in the storeroom of factory workshop.

By exploring all the storage options open to you, you can make the most of your storage space and save time and money – just what every business needs in the recession.

It’s not always just the large items that are required to be put into storage. Sometimes there needs to be a place for the smaller parts to be kept. That’s when small parts storage comes in handy. Small parts storage is a comprehensive range of highly adaptable products that are specifically designed to bring order to the storage of small parts that can quickly turn into a heap of confusion if not properly stored.

Products available in the small part storage range include plastic drawer units, containers, louvred panels and feeder trolleys – all of which can be used independently or combined to form a complete, fully integrated, storage system to suit any. Anything from screws, springs, nuts and bolts to small tools and components can be stored neatly, securely and logically for fast, easy stock rotation, which is of key importance when despatching or checking stock for reorder.

Plastic Containers

These containers are tough, attractive and adaptable. Available in a variety of colours, they can self stacked or simply hung from louvred panels – utilising valuable storage space which is normally wasted.

Louvred Panels

Containers can be shelved, or hung onto special louvred panels, to fit on to shelving ends, walls, bench units, trolleys or free standing racks – allowing storage of small parts tidily where needed.

Plastic Drawer Units

These high impact plastic units provide the perfect answer to small parts storage problems in the factory workshop or storeroom.

There is a diversity of solutions to your storage problems and with each of them have advantages and disadvantages.

There are some companies still using paper records. Not everyone has made to leap to a paper free life. As companies make the decision to go paper free, they face the challenge of what to do with paper records. Some may opt for third party storage. It can be a relatively painless, but at a cost. Some companies may still require frequent access to the archived records, so this wouldn’t be an option.

Commercial storage may provide an easy solution but careful consideration must be made of the costs of transporting records to and from the site, charges for retrieving and replacing boxes, staff time taken up with telephoning reference requests to the storage facility, and the time necessary to receive requested material.

It can be tempting to concentrate all efforts into the computer systems and electronic file storage, without realising that paper storage is important as well.

The good news is that, of course, paper storage isn’t rocket science. Once a good file storage system is established, life will be much easier. Paper storage also frees up space in the office and boosts productivity, while document storage also keeps documents secure.

As previously mentioned, file storage can be paid for but, of course what if constant access to paperwork is needed, which is why so many prefer on-site document storage. The one-off purchase of materials and units to house records is an option many companies are taking to save on costs.

It can be a bit tricky to negotiate your way through the options, but once your document storage facility is established, you will wonder how you previously got by.