I’m lucky enough to have just a 7 mile commute from home in Toddington to Avondale Self Storage in Childswickham following quiet country roads.

Two or three mornings a week I go via Stanton to take the dog’s for a 3 to 5 mile walk on The Cotswold Way and the many other footpath’s on the escarpment. We rarely see another human, just sheep, horses, lovely Dexter and Galloway cattle, rabbits, hare and deer, oh, and many pheasants! It’s a great way to start the day and it wears the dogs out for at least a few hours.

I roll into the office around 8.15am where Claire (my wife and colleague) is just starting her working day.

Then it’s on to the storage building walkaround. It starts with straightening up the trollies and continues with walking the corridors with the handheld Dyson, just to hoover up any debris left from the previous day. Once a week I’ll sweep all the passages with the Karcher push along sweeper, it’s like a mini road sweeper, it does a grand job. There’s also the weekly room clean. This involves printing a vacation report from Space Manger, then going around with a broom, dustpan & brush and the little Dyson to clean any storage room’s that have been vacated in the previous week.

Next, I join Claire for a coffee and then the two of us crack on with paperwork. This involves running the Space Manager software which issues the daily invoices and reminds us of any late payers, thankfully we don’t get too many of those. It then goes through direct debit customers and finally it prints and e-mails appropriate invoices.

Then it’s e-mails, delete all the junk and respond to enquiries that come through our website. Did you know, you can get an instant quote and even reserve a room using our new website!

There’s always a few more computer based jobs to do, such as coming up with a new blog!

10.30am… ‘Pop Master’! I’d like to say everything stop’s for Ken, but the reality is, the phone always rings or one of many couriers comes to deliver a parcel for one of our business customers, why don’t couriers stop for ‘Pop Master’?!�

Lunchtime….. of course, we don’t close for lunch as this is when many customer’s pop in to visit their self storage room, so it’s lunch on the go for us, followed by a quick dog walk around the ‘Tree Field’, whilst watching the CCTV cameras on the phone.

My afternoon is generally taken up by maintenance around the building, cutting the grass or tending to customers needs. Or, depending on the time of year, looking after the arable farm land and the 700 odd tree’s that we have planted over the years.

No one day’s the same, as are no two customer’s the same. That’s another great part of the job dealing with those customers, giving them advise and listening to there stories. It was only mentioned yesterday, that visiting Avondale can be like visiting a social club, as it’s surprising how often customer’s bump into people that either live down the road or haven’t seen for years. They then go on to help themselves to a coffee and swap stories about storage.

5.30pm’s end of the working day, so back the computer up, set the alarm, lock up and head that glorious 7 mile drive home.