In recent years, many companies of any kind have had to make a complete change to their business model in order to make it work and stay competitive. If you run a small business, you might need storage ideas for lots of reasons. You might have scaled back office sizes after the pandemic because of new hybrid working trends, or you might be underestimating how much space you’ll need just as you’re starting to outgrow your premises. There is a challenge associated with each, for which we have a number of ideas and solutions.
Here we provide you with our top storage ideas for small businesses, from digitalising your paperwork to self storage solutions – read on to find out more:
Expand
Logically, the best way to get more room is to move somewhere with more room to begin with. When it comes to bigger office space, finding a larger location to work out of has innumerable benefits. Having more space at work can be a huge advantage if your business is out of room. You’ll want to find out if you can expand into a larger building.
Although an office move will involve higher rent and other associated expenses, the move can also give you the opportunity to hire more personnel. In turn, this can potentially lead to an increase in revenue. Whatever you decide, remember to consider location, as it will also make storage a viable option. Thanks to the newly larger floor space, you can plan ahead in terms of what you need in terms of storage, knowing your new location allows this.
If you are considering purchasing a property for an office, some of the things to consider recording include inventory and archives, files, office equipment, computer requirements, kitchen, storage, and so on. But if putting more people into the office isn’t an option, or isn’t the right option right now, read on – we have plenty of ideas for you.
Get Creative
For some, the premises to go with the small business won’t actually be small. But so often it is, and if you’re one of the many small businesses with limited space you may have to become inventive.
Think Outside the Box
Examine everything in the office carefully to see and use every bit of space. Maybe the whole cabinet space is being used to store papers that are outdated, old in-house printed products that have not been sold or old technical devices that don’t work with the present technology. Move them away and create new space to use for storage.
Whatever you store – books, merchandise, files, etc – could it be stored on a set of bookcases or shelving units on rails so that the storage slides into place as needed and more can be used as it passes? This isn’t a bad set-up for stock storage but works just as well for anything your business might require more space for.
Take Advantage of Wall Space
If you think you’ve used every possible grain of cabinet, desk, drawer and floorspace, next lookup. Mounted shelving units, cubbies and hooks are fantastic, effective ways to keep things you don’t use all the time out of the way and off the floor. But if you want to think even higher, keep going – could you use your ceiling when it comes to optimising storage space? Think about systems that can be raised and lowered in order to bring stock to your level.
Open Plan Workspaces
Executives and your most senior members of the management team will need private office space because of the nature of what they talk about, which is likely to be very confidential and they may need to get away from their teams and focus on their strategical thinking. Nevertheless, this might not be the case for middle management who are still enjoying an office to themselves, which they might not need to use daily. Embrace an open plan office in particular which can free up space and leave you with redundant offices that you could use for storage.
Modular Furniture
The main advantage of modular furniture is the furniture can be changeable to various layouts as your need, which can be extremely useful in where living space is limited. Another benefit is the price, it usually less than the traditional furniture simply because you buy what you need, when you need it.
Digitalise
Does your business still operate on paper? If you did away with a lot of your outdated paper filing, you might find that you could free up a lot of administrative space that is currently crammed with filing cabinets and sales archives. It’s a large project to begin with, but with a plan or even outsourcing this work, you can leave the paper trail behind you and scan all paperwork on to your network – and that’ll be easier to access, too, especially for employees working from home or out of office at a meeting.
Release that filing space, and what do you have? You might well have space for more desks. You might have space for more products. You might even have space for a creative breakout area where your team can hang out and have brainstorming sessions.
Get Storage Space
When you have literally run out of useable space in your office, and moving into a bigger space is not an option, then looking at business storage solutions might be your best option. Another great fact with having business storage is that it is completely up to you which size, type and location you choose! You might think that storage units are still dark, dank, unsecure places but nowadays business storage units are secure, clean, air-conditioned and very convenient to access!
