World Executives Digest | As a startup, most of the time, you won’t have that much room in your budget for leasing an enormous office space. In fact, chances are that you’ll run a home-based enterprise for the time being. While it is true that this somewhat lowers your operational expenses, it also puts you in a more difficult logistical scenario. First of all, you’re forced to hire remote workers because you really have no room for them (other than to pay for work stations in a shared office space). Second, your home is probably not optimized for work, which is why you’ll need to make some extra investments to make up for it. Finally, you won’t have enough storage space. Here are several things that you can do about the latter.
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Basement
The reason why the basement should be the first option on this list is due to the fact that it’s probably already being used as a kind of a storage facility. In other words, you don’t have to make any radical changes to it, only figure out a way to use it much better. First of all, you need to improve the issue of illumination, due to the fact that the efficiency of your storage relies on your ability to find the item you need as quickly as possible. The lack of natural light influx can be a serious issue in the basement.
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Attic
The thing that makes an attic so ideal for storage is the fact that it’s relatively easily accessible and, for the most part, completely unused or underused. Still, with a couple of innovative storage ideas for your attic, you can easily transform it into a backup storage unit, or even your main storage unit, provided that you don’t have too much equipment or work supplies. Keep in mind, however, that it can be highly impractical to drag all of these storage materials to and from your attic, which is why this option might be off limits in some industries.
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Innovative use of shelving
Even though you might already have some shelves installed in your home, chances are that there are many other applications that you just haven’t come up with as of yet. For instance, ceiling racks and wall mounts can help you utilize empty spaces and areas inside of your own home, thus helping you feel like you’re generating storage space out of thin air. The thing you need to keep in mind here, however, is the fact that the installation needs to be as reliable as possible, due to the fact that it poses a safety risk otherwise. Someone could get injured and property could get damaged if these racks aren’t fastened well enough.
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Sheds
Not every single office supply needs to be kept in your home and there are some additional garden facilities like garages and sheds that you could use for this purpose as well. Nowadays, you have the option of ordering quality sheds online, which will help you choose the size, the type and the material that it’s made of, without having to construct it on your own. This way, you can be sure that any essential work-related equipment that you’ve stored there is safe and ready for later use.
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Furniture storage
Some furniture has additional storage options that you might have failed to consider. While this may not be business-like or even professional-looking, no one can deny the efficiency of this method. Fortunately, a lot of office supplies have properties that will allow them to be stored under the bed, in a cupboard or in a cabinet. Just remember that this may have an impact on the overall efficiency of your living space, as well as its visuals.
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Outsourced storage
In a scenario where you just have too many things to store, you can always hire an outside storage unit. Chances are that there are some storage units available for hire in your area as well, which is something that you want to both consider and budget. The problem with this issue lies in the fact that this is usually not so close to your base of operations, which means that retrieval of an item might take a while. In other words, storing items that you might urgently need is not a great idea.
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Reducing your use of paper
In the digital era, it’s much easier to go paperless than it ever was before. Due to the fact that an average office worker prints about 10,000 sheets of paper every year, this can save you a considerable amount of space. What this means for your business is the fact that you don’t need to store so much paper in your home or your tiny office. Still, this opens up even more space-saving potential for you. For instance, you can also get fewer toner cartridges and even get by with a smaller, less potent printer.
Conclusion
Each of the above-listed methods gives you a new option on how to proceed to get more space for your startup. The best thing is the fact that these space-saving methods also reduce your operational expenses by quite the margin.
