If your child will soon be starting kindergarten, then you are likely feeling very sentimental for a good reason. The first day of kindergarten is when your "baby" suddenly seems so much older as they begin their "new life" as an elementary school student. You likely already have a spare room or garage filled with mementos from when your young boy or girl truly was just a little baby that you are hoping have "survived in storage" this long without getting damaged, and your child will soon be coming home with school work that you will want to save and cherish forever. That makes now a great time to rent a small storage unit to finally get all of those baby mementos in a safe place and have a safe place to store all of the new memories your child creates in school.
Climate-controlled Storage Unit
While the size of the storage unit you need will vary greatly depending on just how many baby items you still have that are in good condition (check items stored in garages and attics to make sure they haven't been damaged by temperature and moisture fluctuations before you reserve a unit based on their size), it is important to choose a climate-controlled unit when you have the goal of keeping your child's keepsakes in good shape for years to come.
Storage units with climate control are protected from natural temperature and humidity fluctuations. You will likely want to store some of your child's schoolwork and maybe even those coloring books your child tried to hard to color perfectly when they were just a toddler. Paper can become moldy very quickly in a humid climate and can become brittle in a climate that is too dry. That makes choosing a self storage facility that keeps their climate-controlled units at between 30 percent and 50 percent humidity best when storing any papers.
To get the storage unit ready for all of the items you plan to store, it is a good idea to cover the bottom of it with wooden pallets if the floor of the unit is concrete to protect items on the floor of the unit from moisture.
Make Room for These School Mementos
Once you have your baby items in storage, designate a special place in your home where you will place your child's school papers, art work, and other keepsakes until you transfer them to the storage unit. Your child will likely begin bringing new items home every day, so you need to find a safe place to keep them between trips to the storage unit. Of course, you will want to hang that new art work on the refrigerator for a few days before you store it and replace it with a new piece.
Since this will be your child's first year of school, you will likely want to save more items they create and accumulate this year than you may in later school years. Label a cardboard box "Kindergarten- First Month" to store all of the items they bring home during their first month in school. While it can be difficult to part with anything your child creates, designate just one more box to fill for the remainder of the school year and fill it with the items you think your child would love to see when they are older, along with a few of your favorites.
Create just one or two boxes to fill each school year thereafter (or three if you must!), because you need to be sure to save room for those sports uniforms and trophies you will want to save for your child if they decide to get involved in a sport. Additional items to save include your child's school concert programs, their favorite school outfits as they outgrow them, and of course, those holiday gifts they make for you in class, including those precious "Mother's Day" and/or "Father's Day" projects their teachers have them make to bring home for you on your special days.
If your child will be starting kindergarten soon, then now is a great time to make sure their baby items are not getting damaged while being stored in your attic or garage and transfer them to a climate-controlled storage unit. Choose a unit that has plenty of extra room for all of those school keepsakes that you would like to preserve and your child will love seeing when they are an adult.
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