We got a storage unit. I broke my own rule. If I keep this up, next I'll be getting cable TV and running up credit card debt on professional manicures and iced coffees. Then we'll never be able to afford a vacation again! Okay, who am I fooling? None of those things will ever happen. I like money way too much. We got a storage unit because there was actually a sound business case for it. When we went to the storage facility, I interviewed the manager. I am helpless against my fascination with the curious American phenomenon of storage units. About ten percent of Americans rent a storage unit. To me, that is huge, especially because a lot of those units are shared by couples or families. It would be really interesting to know the number of individual adults who rely on storage outside their main living space. Go ahead and add in all the adults who store stuff at their parents' house, why don't you? Some people use their storage units as part of their workday. The facility we used apparently had a few contractors, painters, and landscapers who stored their tools and materials. That makes a lot of sense for security reasons alone. Access for a truck is probably easier than at most homes. Someone could rent a cheap, small apartment and still run an equipment-intensive business. This all came as a surprise to me, because in my professional work, I had never before known of a storage unit that actually earned its keep. What a truly novel concept. Our storage unit didn't pay for itself. At least, I assume it didn't. The purpose was to enable us to move as quickly as possible when my husband got a great job in a new city. We had only twelve days to make the move. We decided to store our stuff and stay in an Airbnb while we looked for a place. This was a matter of convenience that cost us about $300. The breakdown was two van rentals instead of one, and the price of a month's rent on the storage unit. It would be nice if we had gotten prorated rent, but there wasn't any margin in that for the storage facility. Why not rent out our nicely broom-swept unit twice in the same month? Is it possible that we broke even on this deal? Maybe. It's hard to know, but maybe. With our backs to the wall, desiring to move our stuff directly from our old home to a new home, we might have made an expensive choice. We might have grabbed the first option we saw. In our experience, the rental market in our region is very tight, and even calling within three hours of an ad posting is no guarantee that the place is still available. We got our last place because we were the first of 83 callers; I saw the listing within five minutes of posting, and my husband arranged to drive over to look at it moments later. We definitely would have made an offer on the very first place that remotely met our criteria and took parrots. There are three options in this scenario: pay the same, pay more, or pay less. This city being what it is, you get less for more money, like tapas or sushi. Paying less is usually not paying less. There are plenty of run-down properties on the rental market here, many evidently in such bad shape that the ads don't even include photos. What you get in a shabby, older rental house is the worst of everything. Poorly weatherized with old, inefficient appliances, running up your utility bills, usually adding insult to injury by having slower internet, too. The $300 we spent on double moving vans and a month of storage works out to $25 a month for a year. That could go up like a flash in the pan. In the context of rent or energy inefficiency, it's barely noticeable. There's no way to know, but it's entirely possible that this finagling of the storage unit actually did pay for itself. More likely I am just trying to make up a nice little story to assuage my guilt over "wasting" money. We sold our car back to the dealership this month. This is salient. We knew when we planned this move that we had a large windfall check coming our way (two cheers for Volkswagen) and also that our monthly expenses would be dropping. We could afford to do something ridiculous like move all our worldly goods twice in eight days, knowing that this would be a one-time expense. This story has a happy ending. We found a great apartment right on the waterfront. It's super tiny, even smaller than the tiny house we just vacated, but the location really can't be beat. We can walk to the library, grocery store, dry cleaner, hair salon, post office, pharmacy, and pet supply in less than half a mile. Having that buffer of time to look at rental listings and visit the neighborhood in person made all the difference. It was worth the extra two days of schlepping and hauling. It also gave us time to do another round of culling on our stuff after we had seen our tiny new space. The sad ending with most storage units is that people get them without an exit strategy. Nobody ever chooses an end date. There are people in my life who have spent over $10,000 on storage units over the years, and people who have lost the contents to auction, and people who have done that multiple times. For such a unique part of our culture, we haven't yet figured out how to have storage units make sense in our lives. I'll never stop wondering why so many people make such an expensive choice, a very costly way to postpone decisions. Think of all the other ways that money could be spent! Comments are closed.
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AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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