Houston, TX Military Storage
Houston is one of the largest cities in the U.S., and has a huge military population. When you think of self storage, the first thing that comes to mind is storing personal items like old mattresses, or possibly family pictures. You wouldn’t think that military personnel would need storage space, but you’d be surprised. Soldiers come to train from all over the U.S., and all of them obviously need to bring most of their belongings along because they don’t know how long they’ll be away from home. But obviously, having a crowded room can be a nuisance. Let’s take a look at what solutions the self-storage industry has waiting for you.
What to Store and How to Store It
Houston has two large military bases in its immediate vicinity. The Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base has a total of 924 military personnel on its base. On the contrary, the Texas Army National Guard doesn’t have as many people living on the base, but it has a total of 19,000 soldiers that are constantly coming to receive training. Whether soldiers are permanently living on the base, or coming to train for the National Guard, they need to have a stable place to put their belongings for the duration of their stay, and using self storage is the best way to go about doing something like that.
Trying to figure out what to place in a storage unit can be a little tricky if you haven’t done it before. If you want to store things that you will need constantly, find a facility that allows you to have 24-hour access to your storage unit. Something that makes storing things in Houston difficult is its harsh weather. Houston has cold winters and extremely hot and humid summers. But don’t let that scare you, you can still store temperature sensitive things such as medicine in your unit because almost every unit in Houston’s 473 storage facilities allows you to store in climate controlled units. Whether you’re storing alcohol to drink on your night off or weapons that you’ll need during training, you won’t have to worry about heat causing damage to your belongings.
You might also want to consider putting your car in storage if you’re going to be away for long periods of time, whether it be for war or for vacation. Being in Houston, you don’t have to worry about things like sea salt ruining the paint on your car, but you might want to consider storing it in an indoor unit because of the weather. You also have the option of keeping your car in an outdoor unit to let your car get some vitamin D, but we will leave that up to your discretion.
Off to War
If you find yourself being suddenly shipped off to war, we doubt that the first thing you’ll think of is making sure your online bill pay is set up to make automatic payments for your storage unit. The government has been gracious enough to ensure that storage facilities will not auction off the contents of your unit if you default on your payments while you’re away. If you ask us, it’s the least they can do in exchange for you risking your lives for us.
Storage facilities also offer discounts to active military members, making it easier to afford long term. Even if you’re traveling within the U.S. and you decide to leave your things in one place for a while, it’ll be easier on your wallet.
Safety and Surveillance
Being in the military, safety is probably a huge concern for you. Hopefully local storage facilities can live up to your standards. Star Choice, a storage facility just 3.5 miles away from the Texas Army National Guard, is a fully fenced facility, has electronic gate entry, and 24-hour surveillance cameras. The cherry on top is that it also has alarm systems for its individual storage units, which is not as common as we would like it to be. Some storage facilities will even let you store guns and other weapons, so making sure no one can get their hands on that stuff is of the utmost important. Be sure to see to it that the facility you’re storing in is well equipped for your special needs.
