● Uno Chicago Grill at 17734 Garland Groh Boulevard Hagerstown, MD 21740 is one of our preferred neighborhood eating establishments.  They have one of our favorite veggie pizzas around and offer great lunch specials. You can visit their website to check out their menu or find them on Facebook . We recommend you check them out!

● A neighborhood isn’t complete without a wonderful market, and Martins Farm Market is ours. Martin’s is located at 21 East Potomac Street Williamsport, MD 21795, they have an awesome selection of fresh fruit and veggies. They also carry a variety of spices and seasonings, we are sure you can find anything you may need there!

● Aaron’s Sales & Lease located at 1181 Maryland Avenue Hagerstown, MD 21740. Aaron’s offers affordable and great quality residential and office furniture, electronics and appliances. We have personal experience with their employees and know they have impeccable customer service, we highly recommend them.

We hope you enjoyed finding out about our favorite places.  Got any places we should visit?  Post about them on our self storage Hagerstown Facebook or Twitter page.

• Real Simple has a great checklist for organizing a basement (not a fun chore). Start by assessing the clutter, deciding what to keep, labeling items and installing things like shelving or hooks to store items off of the floor.
• As you are getting rid of clutter, why not make some money at the same time? Check out national secondhand retail chains like Play It Again Sports, GameStop (video games and consoles), Plato’s Closet (teen and young adult clothes and accessories), and Music Go Round (instruments) that will pay you for your used items. Check out Good Housekeeping’s other ideas to turn your trash in to cash this spring.
• Before you trash mismatched socks and old clothes. Consider turning them into rags to use for cleaning and dusting. It’s a great way to save you money on disposable towels. Check out TLC’s great article for more great suggestions.
• Spring is also a great time to complete a quick home energy assessment. Before summer hits make sure that your air conditioning doesn’t seep through the cracks in your home. Check out organizations such as Energize New York and Connecticut’s Neighbor to Neighbor Energy Challenge to help you keep cool and save you money in the summer months.
• Did you know DIY cleaners are easy to make and work great? There are many cleaners you can make on your own with ingredients you may already have. The Mint suggests a great one that can clean tough stains and build up in the shower, combine a ½ cup baking soda, 1/3 cup ammonia, ¼ cup vinegar, and six cups of water in a plastic spray bottle.

Happy Spring Cleaning to everyone in our Hagerstown, Martinsburg, and Williamsport Neighborhoods!

Ever since shows like A&E’s Storage Wars and SpikeTV’s Auction Hunters have started popping up, we get a lot of calls asking about our storage auctions in Washington County.  So, what are they and can you really strike it big?

Well, here is a little self storage auction background.  Auctions can be fun and exciting, and if you are a treasure hunter with a few extra dollars, well, it can’t be beat.  “We used to see maybe 5-10 people at our auctions, and now we get a much bigger crowd because of those shows.  It is neat to see, because the more people that are there, the more the enthusiasm just skyrockets ” says District Manager, Kevin Bledsoe.

If you would like to attend any auction and do some bidding, here are some items to keep an eye out for:

Tools. Tools like saws, power cables, hammers, nails, and tool boxes are hot items.   Even if they are gently used, there are always people looking for a reliable set of tools and those usually sell well if you are looking to resell.

Furniture. Keep an eye out for small cabinets or drawers with multiple containers or compartments inside. If the furniture piece itself is nice, there might be something even nicer inside one of the compartments.  That is how jewelry is often found.

Electronics. Think the more specialized the better, such as espresso makers, fancy coffee presses, carbonation machines, high quality ice cream makers and the like.  If you see a lot of everyday appliances such as toaster ovens and old washers, these probably don’t have a great value, but worse comes to worse can often be sold just for their parts.

Boxes Marked Fragile. Oftentimes you can find small little knickknacks that have value here.

Curious what some of the strangest items ever found in a storage unit are?

The Knightrider Car. Cars are commonly stored at facilities, but when someone drove up with a copy of Michael Knight’s K.I.T.T. at a storage facility in the UK there was some jaw dropping.

A Dinosaur Skull. Actor Nicholas Cage was actually in a bidding war with Leonardo DiCaprio over a Tarbosaurus skull that was found at a local self storage facility.

Never-released Michael Jackson Tracks. Joe Jackson owned a storage unit that was claimed by the storage facility after failure to pay rent.  Inside it were unrecorded tracks, including some recordings with Tina Turner.  These were from a period where Michael Jackson was between contracts, so the winning bidder was able to legally claim them.

But don’t take our word for it, visit an auction in your community for yourself and see what you find.   But first, check out the shows that started it all:

Auction Hunters

Storage Wars

We can’t believe 2011 is over and 2012 is on our doorstop. In honor of New Year’s we have a few resolutions we’d like to share with you. We are getting more “social”. We are now doing email marketing, self storage blogging and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We think this is the best way to reach all of our customers and interact with our Washington County communities. We’ll have great info such as:

• Local events you can’t miss
• Exclusive offers
• Other local business specials
• Handy organizational tips
• Lots of fun stuff

We hope you join us! Follow these links below.

Speaking of resolutions, here are a few from our Manager’s:

• To become more organized.
• To read more books and watch less TV.
• To learn a new language.
• To continue providing the best customer service around.
• To spend more time with the kiddos.

Here is a quote we find really inspirational:

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson.

We hope you have a fabulous 2012 from the team at Valley Storage!