7 Reasons

Tag: unit

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Rent A Self Storage Unit

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Rent A Self Storage Unit

    If you thought self storage units were just for storing stuff in, you’d be wrong. Yes, you can use storage to stow your furniture when moving house, hoard your bric-a-brac from yesteryear or safely store those family heirlooms, but a growing number of people are finding all sorts of other clever uses for self storage units. Check out these inspirational reasons why you should bag yourself a self storage unit.

    7 Reasons To Rent A Self Storage Unit
    It’s a little known fact that The Beatles used to practice in a self storage unit. Somewhere near Liverpool.

    1.  Really Good For Rockers. Accessible 24 hours a day, and with no neighbours to upset, more and more bands are turning to self-storage facilities as a place to practice. As well as offering a consistent venue – removing the worry of where you’re going to get together every wee – a storage unit means you can lock up your kit in a secure location as well as providing some awesome acoustics! So good are the sound qualities in fact that in 2006, up-and-coming rock band Mohair actually recorded a track at south Safestore London and, although the song never charted, critics loved its “squally” tone.

    2.  Brilliant For Business. With no business rates and no utility bills, self storage units are ideal for businesses. Literally thousands of small business owners already make use of self storage, with business customers believed to account for up to a third of the UK’s rented space. So, if you’re selling online and you’ve no need for a physical store front, or your home business has outgrown the garage, self storage provides an excellent solution and, with everything included in one monthly bill, it makes budgeting simple.

    3.  Ideal For Pumping Iron. Take a storage unit, add some weights, a running machine and even a punch bag and you have yourself a fully functioning gym. Small units can be utilised for private gyms when space at home simply doesn’t permit. Larger facilities can be made into fully functioning gymnasiums and martial arts gyms, meaning that, as a business grows and cash flow increases, more space can be added without the concern of spiraling rates and utility bills.

    4.  Wonderful Workshops. If you’re into repair and restoration, a self storage unit can make an excellent workshop. From antique furniture to engine rebuilds, storage units provide the perfect venue for any restoration projects without the need to clutter up your own home with random spare parts.

    5.  Awesome For Art. Many folk look at a storage unit and see space, but show it to an artist and they will see something altogether different. Some see the ideal studio space where they can create their next masterpiece, whereas others see the ideal venue for their next exhibition. With floor space for stunning sculptures and wall space for passionate paintwork what better location for an edgy art installation?

    6.  Delightful For Dancers. From ballet to street, storage facilities up and down the country are being utilised by all kinds of dancers and crews. Affordable and dry, storage units make the ideal rehearsal studios for those on a tight budget. All that’s required are the addition of a few mirrors and an audio system and your unit is good to go. No more fighting to book slots at the local studio or practicing routines in the park.

    7.  Superb Studies. When home life is a little hectic and there’s just no where to get away from the hustle and bustle of modern family life, why not retreat to your own personal den. From novelists and poets to copywriters and freelance journalists, many professionals have chosen to rent a self storage unit simply for a spot of peace and quiet. Kitted out with desks, lamps, filing cabinets and a laptop, these unique dens provide a veritable haven of tranquility from the outside world – ideal for those who simply must concentrate without interruption.

  • 7 Reasons That This is the Worst Survey of All Time

    7 Reasons That This is the Worst Survey of All Time

    Readers of 7 Reasons, I’m breathless with excitement.  I’ve discovered something amazing.  While reading this fine article to research something else, I found, in four short paragraphs in the middle, an account of an astonishingly inept survey.

    The survey was conducted in the 1930s by the Mass Observation organisation and set out to quantify how many people were having sex on Blackpool beach during the month of August.  They conducted their research – in a rather hapless manner – by hanging about on the beach at night looking for people having sex.  During the research they managed to spectacularly and hilariously cock up their own figures.  Here are seven reasons that it’s the worst survey of all time.

    1.  The Premise.  You can call me suspicious (I won’t answer to it though) but isn’t the premise a bit fishy?  I smell a rat; which is a rodent that smells of fish.  It’s like someone at the Mass Observation unit suddenly said – possibly during a meeting at a pub – “I’ve got a great idea chaps, let’s all go to Blackpool and observe people having sex on the beach.”  And everyone drunkenly agreed to it as a terrific idea and an utterly laudable use of their time and resources.  What no one seems to have said is “But wait.  Isn’t that dogging?”  Because that’s what watching people having sex in a public place is.  This makes their observation lack credibility.  This makes it look less like a serious study and more like an excursion for perverts.

    2.  The Results.  The results are also a little suspicious.  During their study into how many people were having sex on the beach during August in Blackpool, they recorded a mere four couples having sex on the beach.  Now, perhaps times have changed and things are a little more liberal in Blackpool these days but there are bus stops in Blackpool where more people are having sex than that in the middle of the afternoon.  And on the beach at any given time, there are usually at least nine people attempting to have sex with a donkey.  The results seem not to accurately reflect the environment that was being surveyed.

    3.  The Personnel.  The credibility of this survey was further undermined because – and this makes it officially one of my favourite surveys ever – one of the people that the Mass Observation researchers observed having sex on the beach was another Mass Observation researcher.  This brilliant incident of the hunter becoming the hunted; the ogler becoming the ogled and the peeper becoming the peepee has catapulted what was already the second least credible survey of all time (after my important research into how much tiramisu you can fit into a 6’2” man with an M in his name in a Yorkshire kitchen in December*) into first place in a race of its own.

    4.  The Results Are Skewed.  The discovery of the researcher having sex means that, according to the Mass Observation survey, 12.5% of all people having sex on Blackpool beach during the month of August are Mass Observation researchers.  Now I don’t wish to appear cynical, but if I was say…let me see…in charge of a rather unglamorous unit that generated statistics on everyday life and I was having a recruitment drive to swell the ranks of nerds that I needed to count things, what better way to glamourise it?  Move over rock stars (whatever they are); move over Errol Flynn and Clark Gable; Mass Observation researchers are unabashed rampant sex beasts and brazen cocksmen and not the stammering bespectacled tweed-wearers that you previously supposed them to be.  If you want to have relations with ladies in hats, join the Mass Observation unit and become a statistician.  I’d imagine that brilliantined brown shoe wearers would be queuing round the block to join.  On bicycles, probably.

    5.  The Results Are Confusing.  But Wait!  What if he was having sex alone?  After all, if he’s the voyeuristic chap that suggested going to Blackpool in the first place, that’s entirely probable.  That would make him 14% of all people having sex on Blackpool beach during the month of August!  That would really be something to boast about.  But that raises further questions.  If you’re having sex alone while watching someone else are you having sex alone?  Do you have to count the other person or people?  What if he has some sort of weird fetish and is having sex alone while watching a tram or looking at a picture of Stanley Baldwin?  Would that mean that former Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was 12.5% of all people having sex on Blackpool beach in August?  Should you count all of the passengers on the tram?  The computations are mind-boggling.

    6.  It Might Be Illegal.  By and large, Mass Observation researchers were amateur volunteers (and deviants apparently), but the Mass Observation organisation accepted donations and funds from book advances, so it’s not beyond  the realms of possibility that the researchers were being paid to do this and it’s highly likely that they were receiving money for expenses.  This raises another question.  What do you call someone that gets paid when having sex?  That’s right, a prostitute.  So, not only has this researcher royally messed up the statistics (and given me a headache) he’s committed an act of prostitution while he was working at the beach.

    7.  It Gets Worse.  The Mass Observation organisation have – in the act of giving money to a prostitute – become a kerb crawler.    That’s the sort of label that makes the organisation that have produced the least credible survey of all time look – incredibly – less credible than they already seemed (which was not at all).  This survey looks like an excuse for voyeurism, depicts Blackpool in unbelievable terms, skews its own findings by engaging in a sexual act on a beach, raises statistical questions that caused me to consider sex with a tram and the organisation that made it might have sullied their reputation by giving money to a hooker.  If there has been a less credible survey ever made I’d love to see it.

    *The survey’s finding:  Bloody loads.