Try as we might, it can sometimes be impossible to avoid clutter in our lives.

Regardless of whether you’ve got a four-bedroom mansion or a single room apartment, mess just seems to build up and up!

Boxes are placed into other boxes, cupboard space is filled to the brim, there’s no more space under the bed, and you’ll continually find very inventive ways to store things that you might just need one day.

The truth is that you really don’t need many of the items you store, but at the same time you just can’t bear to sell anything or give them away!

Unless you’re moving house or someone is visiting for the weekend, we often don’t have many excuses to start clearing away old junk, but there is a way that you can keep your things and have them out of your house: storage units.

Especially for those living in big cities, storage units have been a savior in recent years for anyone who is rapidly running out of room in their own home for essential things!

If you’re the kind of person who leaves their clothing draped over a chair because unused exercise gadgets have a place in your drawers instead, then you definitely need to consider renting a storage unit.

What to do first

There’s an unwritten rule that if you haven’t used or worn something for a year, then you’re pretty unlikely to need it in the house!

An old pair of skis, those “fashionable” white jeans you bought, and even a stack of calendars dating back to 1999 are all eligible to be shipped off to a storage unit if you don’t exactly require them right now, but not bold enough to ditch them yet.

Start to make a pile of everything you’re quite sure you can live without being in your home. Really think hard about what you actually need and what is simply inessential.

What to do next

Now that you have a pile of items to send into storage, it’s time to find a location! Storage near you doesn’t have to be difficult to find, especially after a quick Google search.

A great thing about some modern storage unit businesses is that they’ll actually pick up and return your items whenever you want.

This is a genius idea because, left to your own devices, you may be unlikely to have the urgency to hire a van and move them to a storage unit yourself! There are different sized rooms available to rent, which means you should only pay for the capacity you actually need.

What happens now?

Well, you now know what it feels like to live without all that clutter.

If you do this for a year, you’ll discover that there’s really not much you actually miss. And that it’s just the anxiety of leaving something behind forever that’s troubling you.

You have the option to keep adding to the storage unit over the years, as you can keep it as long as you like, or you might finally have the courage to start selling items online or even donating to charity.

In the end, you’ll feel so much more freedom from having space for the things you actually need. Your home looks cleaner, you don’t have to trip over anything, and you’ll feel like a burden has been taken from your shoulders and there’s nothing weighing you down.