Does Your Stuff Actually Need Climate Control in Tallahassee?

Tallahassee summers are long and wet, and that is the part people underestimate when they rent a storage unit. It is not one bad week in August. It is months of high humidity in a row, and some things do not survive it.

Here is how to tell what needs climate control and what does not, so you are not paying for it on a unit full of lawn chairs.

What actually gets ruined without climate control?

Paper and photographs go first. Humidity makes them curl, stick together and grow mold, and once photographs have fused there is no fixing them.

Leather is next. Handbags, jackets, sofas and boots grow surface mildew in a damp unit, and Florida summers give it months to work.

Wood furniture swells and contracts with the moisture in the air. Joints loosen, veneer lifts, drawers stop closing properly. Solid antique pieces are the most vulnerable because the joinery moves the most.

Electronics fail quietly. Moisture works into circuit boards and connectors, and you usually do not find out until you plug it in a year later.

Anything with glue in it is worth adding to that list. Bookbindings, framed art, some flat-pack furniture. Adhesive gives up in sustained humidity.

What is fine in a standard unit?

Plenty, and this is where people overspend.

Garden tools, hand tools and most metal items are built to sit in a shed. Plastic storage bins, patio furniture and camping gear are designed for outdoor use already. Kitchenware, ceramics and glass do not care about humidity.

If an item spends its normal life in a garage or outdoors, it does not need climate control in storage either.

How do you decide when it is a mixed load?

Sort by what you would be upset to lose rather than by what the item cost.

A garage clear-out with two boxes of photo albums in it is a climate control job, because the two boxes are the only part you cannot replace. A unit of exercise equipment and holiday decorations is not.

If you are moving a household and genuinely cannot separate the two, climate control is the safer call. Replacing one water-damaged sofa costs more than a year of the difference.

When climate control is not worth it

If you are storing for six weeks over a move in January, humidity is not your problem and you can skip it.

If the unit is holding tools, bikes and outdoor equipment, skip it. If everything you own is already in sealed plastic bins and none of it is paper, leather or electronic, skip it.

We would rather you rented the right unit than the expensive one.

Storing in Tallahassee?

Apalachee Self Storage is at 2001 Apalachee Pkwy, on the south side of the Parkway about a quarter mile east of Blairstone Road and one mile west of Capital Circle SE. That is roughly two miles east of downtown and the Florida State Capitol, and about 2.9 miles from Florida State University.

Every unit here is climate controlled and reached from inside the building rather than from an outdoor row, so sun and driving rain stay off your door on the way in. You get in with a code at the building entrance, and the buildings carry fire sprinklers and detectors throughout. Sizes run from a 5x5 locker up to a 20x30, and new tenants get a free disc lock at move in.

Not sure which side of the line your load falls on? Call us on (850) 930-9204 and describe what you are storing. Phone support runs 8AM to 8PM every day, and we will tell you honestly if you do not need climate control.