The amount of products and goods being stored in warehouses these days has led warehouse managers to seek all kinds of avenues for storage.

Warehouse shelves have taken many different forms over the years, but perhaps one of the most versatile is sliding shelves. Sliding shelves allow you to maximize storage in a potentially cramped space, as their sliding design means you may be able to fit more shelves in a smaller area, and slide them around to access them as needed. This can make them a lot easier to use than other types of warehouse storage, since more rigid shelving can take up more space and not be as flexible, size-wise.

Of course, as with every shelf type, there’s certain ways to use this shelving that can maximize its helpfulness to you and your warehouse. If you’re considering sliding shelves for your warehouse but you’re not sure where to best use them, here’s a few of our favorite uses for sliding shelving:

How to Use Sliding Shelves In Your Warehouse

Boxes and packing materials         

One of the best ways to make your warehouse more efficient is through a well-stocked packing station. The shipping/receiving area is always going to be one of the busiest in the warehouse, and making sure it’s organized in a way that helps your team find everything they need is going to keep them more productive, and make your customers much happier.

By using sliding shelves alongside the workstations in your shipping & receiving department, you can stack more needed supplies like broken-down boxes, packing materials (foam, bubble wrap, and the like), or even hand tools like tape dispensers and box cutters. This will help your packing team get to them more quickly, and may help reduce bottlenecks in getting packages out the door!

Document storage

No matter how many people talk about the new digital workplace, a lot of industries still need to retain hard copies of paperwork due to federal regulations, and those can really start to pile up after a while. Sliding shelves can work as an ideal form of document storage, as the sliding track means you can fit more shelves in a given space, allowing for plenty of storage of those document boxes that can start to pile up.

Temperature controlled areas

If your warehouse has a walk-in cooler for perishable items that need the right climate to stay safe and usable, many sliding wire shelves can work alongside your walk in freezer shelving to help make the most of your space. Just make sure they’re rated for the right temperature!

Small parts/items

A lot of warehouses deal in smaller individual items, or even in small parts if they’re in charge of manufacturing/assembling the item before shipment. And, as we all know about small items, they have a bad tendency to get lost!

Dedicating some sliding shelves to be your small part/item storage can solve a few problems in the warehouse, namely their unfortunate tendency to just…vanish between the cracks. Get some industrial storage bins to line your shelves, and come up with an organization method that works for your warehouse, such as color-coding or using shelving labels. Once your small items are all kept together in an easy-to-find space like this, you might just have fewer losses.

Hopefully, a few of these ideas can help your warehouse use sliding shelves and get more organized than you used to be!