No Storage Unit

Can’t see it, can’t reach it, can’t find it, can’t use it, why pay for it?

One of our key policy agreements is not to have a storage unit. Since we don’t have a car, anything we put in storage is a red flag that we won’t be using it. In our area, a 10x20 storage unit costs over $200 a month. What on earth do we own that is actually worth $2400+ per year? If we aren’t using it, then by definition it is WORTH NOTHING.

Or, worse than that: It has NEGATIVE VALUE. It COSTS us to keep it.

Paying rent on stuff we don’t use is precisely what we mean by serving our stuff, rather than having our stuff serve us. I am not commuting to a job I hate just to earn more money to pay a monthly fee to store something I don’t even look at. I don’t care if it’s the Hope Diamond!

When people put supposedly valuable things into storage, they are discounting the likelihood that the item will depreciate while it’s buried in that storage unit. Things crack under the weight of boxes that get stacked on top. Anything made of paper, wood, or fabric deteriorates. Metal tarnishes and corrodes. Porcelain gets crazed. Wax melts. Cloth smells funky and starts revealing mysterious stains. Photographs clump together and mildew. Stuff never comes out of a storage unit in the same condition it went in, especially if it’s been stored in cardboard. Storing it is basically kissing it goodbye.

I’ve seen a lot of anguish and sad tears in the course of my organizing work. My people believe in stuff. They believe that stuff exists in a perfect Platonic form, as immaculate and unblemished as an icon or a digital avatar. In their minds, their stuff looks exactly the way it would in a well-lit, professional-grade catalog photo. They’re often not just disappointed but absolutely gutted by the reality. It’s scratched! It’s dented! It’s broken! It’s ruined! One of my first clients had a black plastic trash bag containing the powdery remains of a smashed plaster bust. Years later, she still believed that it could be fixed somehow. What would a new one have cost, $40? $15? Why would anyone want the crushed, demolished old one rather than a new one that actually functions?

I used to have a storage unit. It cost me about $20 a month and I had it for, off and on, a total of five years. That’s $1200. Not much? In 2000, I actually earned less than that. What’s worse, I was paying storage fees for a bunch of old school papers, used books, a box of childhood toys, a totally unsuitable cheap desk, and three boxes of kitchen stuff. I doubt the stuff in that storage unit was worth twelve dollars, much less twelve hundred. Doing this kind of calculation was completely outside my wildest dreams at the time. It simply never occurred to me.

When I met my current husband, at some point, the subject of my storage unit came up. He immediately said that I should get rid of it. “But then I would be destitute and I would have nothing!” I replied.

These days, I actually believe in money. We make these calculations together because it’s our policy as a couple. Money is where vacations come from!

Do the math. If we save $2500 by not renting a van and taking stuff to a storage unit for a year, that’s $2500 we can (and do) leave in the bank. We could use it to buy replacement stuff any time we like. If we save $500 a month by renting a one-bedroom instead of a two-bedroom (and sadly, where we live it’s more like $1200 a month), that’s then $6000 a year that we’re able to save. (Or $14,400!). One day, maybe we’ll buy a house. If we ever do, we’ll plan around the idea of buying suitable new furniture and housewares and doing all the upgrades and landscaping. Why pay thousands of dollars to store old, outdated, banged-up, deteriorating stuff that might not fit that house, anyway?

Scarcity mindset. Scarcity mindset! We hang onto our old stuff, paying to keep it even when we aren’t using it, because we don’t believe in money. We don’t believe that saving money actually works. We don’t believe in our own earning power. Downsizing is an act of faith and trust, belief that we can increase our earning power and accumulate wealth.