This is not the first time this has happened by any means, but I recently had a conversation with someone who had stuff in a storage unit for ten years.
You already know what I’m going to say about this. What in the Sam Hill could possibly be valuable enough to keep it for ten years without using it?? Stuff sits in storage mostly out of inertia. Out of sight, out of mind. Many people probably feel that it’s worth paying the rent every month simply for the luxury of not having to expend effort to deal with the situation. When is it ever a good time to get a truck, spend half a day clearing out a storage unit, and then figuring out what to do with all that stuff? Since I talk to people about clutter all the time, I do get to hear these stories occasionally. Sometimes, yes, people do get tired of paying money for nothing and they go and clear out their storage units. (Yes, it’s not uncommon for someone to have two separate units, although most people can’t afford three). What do they do with the stuff? Move it into a garage, shed, or “spare” room! It’s almost unheard of for people to get rid of all of it, to just say, You know what? I haven’t missed any of this stuff, I’ma go drop it off. If you do have a storage unit, at least know that you’re not alone. There’s a reason why it’s so easy to find storage units in the US - it’s a multi-billion dollar industry. (I literally just mis-typed that as “in dusty”!) Having a storage unit doesn’t particularly have a cost in terms of mental bandwidth. Probably a lot of people continue to pay that bill and almost never think about what items are actually in there. That’s the whole point. Most people do not like to make decisions. The cost of indecision, here, is a financial one. I did the math with one of my friends, several years ago, and she had spent TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS on her storage unit. I am not kidding. Do you have an extra $10,000? I don’t. This is where we take a moment to talk about the difference between an “asset” and a “liability.” An asset has value and generates value. A liability costs money. It’s hard to come up with something that is truly an asset, because there are so many misconceptions here. A lot of things that seem to be assets are actually liabilities. Understanding the difference can be like flipping a light switch in the perception of one’s household finances. A toolbox. We’ll go with that. If you use tools at your job every day, then those tools are helping earn your paycheck. At a certain point, their cost was fully amortized, maybe even the first week. I cut my husband’s hair today, for the third time ever, and that was when the clippers and scissors I bought paid themselves off. We would have spent more at the barber for three haircuts than what the equipment cost. Now those clippers are an asset that can save us about $100 a year. If we had a storage unit, the clippers would not be in storage, because it would be too annoying to go dig them out every time my man started complaining about his bangs getting too long. If we had a storage unit, we would have two options: One near us at $250 a month, or one across town at $150 a month. I know because I looked into it when we were first planning to move here and debating whether we should really get rid of 80% of our stuff. This means we would have spent either $3000 a year for a unit we could actually get into, or $1800 a year for one that would have required us to either get a car, pay for a rideshare, commute farther to work so we could be near the cheaper storage, or pester other people to give us rides to go get random stuff when we needed it. Or of course pay $1800 a year - the cost of a mighty fine vacation, by the way - just to ignore all that stuff we weren’t using. Now let’s multiply that by five years, and we get: $15,000 OR $9,000 + externalities. Let’s game this out and try to come up with what kinds of possessions it would actually be worth more than $9,000 to store. Business equipment! If we were professional landscapers or event planners, for example, our expensive storage unit could actually help us to earn money. In fact the facility we used for a month when we moved was full of units like that, for professional contractors, painters, landscapers, and others who, like us, would be hard pressed to find a house with a garage out here. We aren’t, though. We don’t own a business. Like most people, what we would have kept in that unit would have been stuff we didn’t have time to deal with during the move, or stuff we felt was Worth Something (TM), and we wouldn’t have realized that five years were going to go by without us making a decision. But storage doesn’t cost that much where we live, you say. Sure, okay, but then what is your exit strategy? Have you sat down and opened the calculator app on your phone and figured out what you have already paid on this liability that is your storage unit? Oh, but it’s not actually my unit, you say. It’s actually So-and-So’s. I know for a fact that other people love to spend their money helping me solve my problems! (Or not, cough) I’m willing to venture that a lot of storage units have stuff belonging to more than one person, and that is part of why nobody has said, I am no longer going to pay this bill. I’ve heard of parents paying for kids’ storage, siblings storing each other’s stuff, and of course people getting stuck with things that belong to an ex, or an old roommate. There are a lot of “watch my dining table for me while I”... have no intention of ever dealing with it. Whose dining table is worth $9,000 anyway? If your parents are storing your stuff - think about whether they’re going to be able to make ends meet on a fixed income. Would you rather they pay for your storage if it meant they have to come live with you when they turn 80? If anyone else is storing your stuff, pull up your socks and go deal with it. If you’re storing someone else’s stuff, this might be a good moment to ask yourself whether this is what is holding you back. You can go over to your unit, look it all over, and take care of your own stuff, then call that person and tell them it’s time to make arrangements with the storage company. Chances are greater than 1% that they will decide it isn’t worth their bother. We did the seemingly impossible. We gave away or sold 80% of our stuff when we decided to take the dream job and move to the beach. Looking back, we made so little at our one-day garage sale that we wish we had simply donated everything and spent that day relaxing. Have we missed any of the stuff we got rid of, like our ladder and our wheelbarrow? Nope. Could we go to Home Depot with the thousands of dollars we saved on not having a storage unit and replace all of it? Yes, and then some! Like most people, what we would have spent on a storage unit over five years would be more than all our furniture and wardrobes combined are worth. Do you have a storage unit? Why? What the heck is in there? Why are you keeping it? When do you think you will actually use it again? Have you decided yet? How much is that indecision costing you? 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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