Innovation, thinking beyond the obvious

100+ uses of a paperclip

One of the ways to make the world a better, more sustainable place is finding new uses for things. By looking for new and innovative ways of doing things with what we already have, we can avoid buying or building new things. Versatility is key in the new economy. Something that portable storage San Diego has understood well and true.

There was a recent study done how where they challenged 4 year olds to come up with as many different ideas as they could for using an everyday object, like a paperclip. Within an hour time frame a group of preschoolers could come up with over 160 ways of using a paperclip, ranging from picking your nose or ears with it to, if you made a really big one you could slide down it. The childs mind is not yet throwing away any ideas as “unmanagable” or “unrealistic”. Instead it centers upon finding as many different uses for the paperclip as they can and let their imagination run free. Now this was a longitudinal study and they retested the kids at age 15. By the time these preschoolers had gotten an education they have trouble coming up with more than 20 uses for the paperclip. We lose a lot due to our education.

Smart thinking

I don't know if portable storage San Diego invited a bunch of preschoolers to work alongside them for the project but they did come up with some very usefull and innovative ways to use containers. First of all containers are for transporting stuff, right? Storage is a new use for containers and an innovation in its own right. Now you can put a bunch of those containers together and build a fence around them and you have transformed a vacant lot into a regular storage rental space at a fraction of the cost of putting up a building. This is exactly the way Coronado Mobile Storage started out!

Now there is more things you can do with a container and one of the things that I thought was really clever is that instead of asking people to bring over their stuff to storage, you can also deliver the container to their door to be filled with their stuff. A lot easier for both the customer, who can put their stuff in at leasure and for the service provider as well. All you have to do is drive the container out there and pick it up after the customer calls to say it's filled! How smart is that?

Many uses for containers

The next step is even more innovative. What else can you use these containers for? Well, it's a huge enclosed space that with a few adjustments can be modified into a mobile office, or you can provide an enclosed space to safely put equipment in at an on location jobsite, roadwork or the like. A few more adjustments and you can make a container into a complete home, where you can live part- or fulltime. A mobile home without the wheels, so to speak. And let's be honest: how many mobile homes are really meant to be mobile, meant to be moved around a lot. Generally it's more like a parked home to begin with. So lose the wheels and use a container to form the basis, put in a few adjustments such as electricity and running water and you have cheap housing, if not on a permanent basis then certainly in times of a crisis or disaster. Heck, let's go even further and equip the containers with their own solarpanels and you'd really be able to park them anywhere!