Strategy for managing storage

As there's no answer yet, I started spending a lot of time at the Global Trade HQ. So far, I've increased my storage capacity from 260 to 280, bought one land expansion and two beach expansions, and purchased as many lanterns and lucky cats as I could to build Tokyo town zones, so that I went from 35 to 21 bonsai trees. Unfortunately, I've thus leveled up to 23 and have two new item categories in the storage. Besides, I had to spend almost all simoleons in the process and have only 13,000 left.

My current strategy is to buy the last piece of beach area, and then get rid of all beach expansion items. After that, I'll go for the remaining 11 pieces of land (which will of course take a while).

However, I'm still interested in hearing what others are doing to use their storage efficiently.

You are going about it all wrong. If you don't need it, sell it. Make money. Produce high priced items and ONLY sell un-needed FINISHED items. ie.. don't sell cheese, but sell pizza. Expand as you go. In other words, once you can expand, do so, right away. I have only 110 storage and have a population of 1.5 million with 720,000 simileons. When building/upgrading you should always purchase the over produced/selling items and produce yourself the items required that you rarely see on the market. One more bit of advice, when in the market, click on anything if the item you need is not displayed as more often then not, I purchase most of the items I need when I am going to as many cities as possible.

Good Luck

You don't need to hold onto those 35 NeoTokyo trees. I would give anything to have them come on the market. Whenever I have several extra of an item I sell it. Take a section of the beach or a quadrant of land, I only save enough tokens for the next one. If I start to get too much of one of the three items I start to sell it. If you got so much of that item in the first place it is bound to be the one that will come back first when you are saving for your next area. I got the entire beach very quickly just saving for one section at a time.

Your storage will get glutted with tokens even when you are doing one update at a time. I had almost enough for a section of land and almost enough for a storage update. I got the rest today and now my 260 storage is down to 180 just like that. And I will start to save for those two things again. Don't worry about selling. They always come back. I have always had an excess of Dr Vu  gloves and never enough remote controls. So I sell a few gloves a week. And I still always have too many. Hope this helps.

I am at level 61 right now. I also have a feeder city (which has grown to level 32 now). My storage is now 465, so note that I had a lot lower capacity at lower levels. I have kept storage to 125 on feeder.

What I write is based on my experience with both cities:

1. Focus on storage + one other expansion (beach/mountain/land). My suggestion is to get done with mountain/beach first after expanding land to some extent. I suggest expanding storage at all times since you keep needing it for everything anyway - war, vu, and what not.

2. If you are in a club, make an alliance with someone for helping each other in expansion. This way, you don't pass off items to global, but help someone to expand and they help you. 

3. In our club, we also do even trades for such items (beyond alliances)

4. Currently I need 20 of each type to expand storage to the next level (i.e. 470). 

5. Even now, I have a policy of hoarding not more than 5 items of a type (unless the items are going to be used for a purpose). After every CoM, I sell off the items except those used for my routine coin making (more about this later). I don't hoard any basic items (feed, mineral, etc.) unless needed for an assignment / routine coin making.

6. Nowadays I have more scope to hoard vu. But I have never hoarded more than 10 per type in the past. During CoM you may add more just so that you have enough for Vu assignments.

7. I never hoard more than 5 of a type for airport items

8. I used to limit 10 of a type for war, but then slowly took it up to 20, etc. Just figure out a balance of how much of the storage you want to spare for war.

9. I have maxed my trade depot (32 crates) and all my stores (thats 11 slots each). I added slots to stores in order of commonly used stuff (fast food got maxed out last since it was least used)

10.  Routine coin making: This has to be changed with region upgrade, but this is what I have done so far:

     - factories reserved for textile

     - make flour, donuts (buy sugar, unless you make it at night)

     - make hammers, nails and then chairs

     - when chairs assembly is full, make shovels and glue

     - use shovels to make grass or saps

     - glue and textiles for shoes

     - at night, I stock up factories for chips and glass and make TVs in the morning. This takes care of this store for the day.

11. The above helps build up my sim coins. I have then used global market/club members to buy for my epic assignments (I hoard upto 5 of each item during Com to help epic, vu repairs, etc.)

Hope this helps. I am still figuring out the setup for regions, but I am going slow on the same purely because I first want to collect coins for the deluxe market (green valley) and then the rest.

I want to know why when you want to expand storage the amount of items you need keeps going up but all we ever get is 5 more storage spaces. Someone at EA needs to even this out, even if we go from 5 to 6 storage spaces at. Time is better than increasing the items we have to come up with while they miserly dole out 5 spaces. Just sayin

Dood honestly what are u doing. Like srsly I get that expanding is really important and is the limiting factor for progress in the game but like youre sacrificing too much for it. Youve probably spent hours combing the global market to get the items u need but admit it, thats absolutely boring and a complete waste of time. 

And whats the point of expanding your storage if all you are doing with your storage is to store your expansion items? 

Now I have a 3.6 million population city with a storage of 340 at level 49 so I would say I am pretty experienced and my tips will work

1. You got to have a feeder city. This is not a should have. This is a must have, unless you want to spend another 50 hours on the global market. After a certain point, 1 feeder city aint gonna do the trick so youll need more. For reference, I have 6 feeder cities and I still feel it isnt enough. So the purpose of your feeder city is it acts as extra storage for expansion items. You also shouldnt upgrade your feeder city too high so you can find more items in the global market much easier. Feel free to spend feeder city simcash on expansion items which you can sell to urself. 

2. You gotta focus on expanding what u want to expand. Dont store items for everything at once, it takes too much space. I reccomend not selling your items first, but when you can expand you just dont collect the items anymore and focus on what u want to expand. 

Hopefully this helps and all the best, dont waste too much time, energy and money when there are faster methods 🙂

@al1quisIf you are not building any Tokyo buildings, sell off your bonsai stash, you only need like 5 for CoM or region deliveries.

Work with club members to manage your storage while expanding at the same time. In my club, we took turns to help each other. We concentrate on helping one to three members to reach max storage by selling all our storage to them. When they reached max, they will start selling all their storage to the rest of us. I went from 300 to 600 (max) within a short time because my club members helped me. I did put on hold my storage expansion for the longest time to help them, but this is very efficient. I cleared my space to help members, and after that they helped me to expand fast, so I hardly deal with storage issues. Now 10 out of 11 members in my club have max storage. We are now focusing on helping the 11th member, who is at 500, to get to max.

All of us don’t even have feeder cities to pull it off.

@J6niceL  Excellent advice, strong clubs will work together and help each other maximize their storage. @bufflord12964  I don’t believe 340 storage  warrants anything to right home about, especially at level 49...and the better investment of time is to open all conversation bubbles found in your city and in cities you visit. The suggestion you offer is simply a shift in wasted time...each feeder city requires the acquisition of expansion items to serve any real purpose and simply goes against the intent of the game and by the way is illegal...before you state something ignorant, I have formally inquired about the legality of feeder cities and received in writing from an EA legally recognized representative (which I had confirmed by the appropriate professional) that you can play more than one city but not for the purpose you are using them as. So you share advice that theoretically could get this mayor in trouble along with yourself...but don’t worry EA has not shown any interest as of yet in dealing with this issue.

My simple suggestion is to consider the wisdom of @J6niceL who has been very supportive and insightful in this forum and has successfully maximized his storage and ignore the suggestion of one that has only made it a little over halfway and offering a path that one day could create an issue for you. Good news is you have a choice. Good luck.