With just about every application and productivity service migrating to the cloud or using cloud storage in an ever-increasing way, getting the most out of your cloud storage usage will save both time and headaches. The following five tips will help energize your cloud storage.

1. Create your own cloud storage

With so many services and programs offering cloud storage as an incentive to use their product many people have accumulated large amounts of random storage space online. Maximize the usage of this space by combining it all together. Use the program “OwnCloud” and turn all these random storage blocks into your own personal data vault. Using OwnCloud takes a bit of work but there are excellent guides available on the net.

2. Publish a blog or website

The site pancake.io allows users to publish web content from a dropbox account. Use the site to publish your text files into webpages and then link directly from the dropbox account. Other options available on pancake.io include support for CSS, PDFs, GIFs, and other common files types.

3. Set Google Docs for offline use

Having files and folders available through any web connection in great until access to the web is cut off. If you use the Chrome browser in concert with Google Drive for Windows, all of your files will sync to your local drive and be available to you. To enable, add the Google Drive Chrome app to the Chrome browser and then enable offline access.

4. Create a pocket scanner

Most smartphones today are manufactured with camera resolutions of significant enough quality in order to scan documents reliably and, most importantly, legibly. To make this process easy, just download a simple scan application like Handyscan or Doc Scan. Once installed, take a quick pic of the important document and sync it to your cloud storage.

5. Designate the cloud as the default download destination

By default, most browsers are configured to automatically download files into a destination folder located on the PC (normally a “downloads” folder) before routing the same file into a cloud storage location. There is no need to duplicate the data each time and waste all that storage space on the local machine. Head into your browsers settings and change the download destination to a folder that has been configured to sync with your cloud service.