Remember when we talked about how to throw your stuff away to save money (so you didn't have to store it)? (Better yet, sell it and make some extra money and/or rent your home to others for storage) Anyway, I recently ran into this piece and it seems to pour salt into an open wound. The details:
The auctioneer slides the steel door up, and a small crowd at the storage facility steps forward for a peek.
They are here to bid on possessions left behind when the people who rented the storage unit on Chicago's West Side stopped paying for it.
The scene is evidence of an unusual opportunity: Business is booming in the sale of belongings that owners can no longer afford to keep at the nation's storage units. For buyers, it's a grab bag that can yield either junk or the luxuries of a life left behind.
Ok, so these people paid $30 to $50 (probably) a month to store their belongings for who knows how long -- maybe a few years? And now, after all that cost, they end up forfeiting all the stuff inside anyway. Wouldn't it have been better to simply sell the stuff in the first place, get the money from the sold items, and forego the expense of renting a storage unit?
Anyway, this piece served as a reminder for me. We regularly do a spring cleaning each year and I'm going to be extra aggressive this year -- if I haven't used something for quite some time and I have no expectation of using it, then off it goes, donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill.
How about you? Anyone out there been paying for a storage unit for a long time? Or maybe you're getting rid of stuff too?
I have never paid for a storage unit but I have gone to several auctions. You'd be amazed at some of the stuff you can get! Once the avid flea market type buyers get what they want, there is still a lot of left over goodies to pick up.
The last one I went to....I bought the contents of the unit for $100. We weren't allowed to open any boxes, and there wasn't really much filling the unit but we could see a bike and guitar case. For me, the bike alone was worth the $100. Well, I won the auction and got a lot of crap, BUT I also got some Howdie Doodie(sp) collectibles, a Fender guitar(rusted but still sellable), clothes that fit my kids still with tags on them and a ton of other little odds and ends. A lot of the boxes were thrown out but we made just over $500 off the unit by selling the smaller items on Ebay and the larger items to people locally.
Heck, if I get laid off, I'm going straight to an auction! LOL
Posted by: Lolita | April 17, 2009 at 10:06 AM
My husband is a packrat kind of guy. Whenever I try to get rid of something, he says "What if I need it again in a month (year, decade)" or, the equally popular "That was the first computer (disk drive, server, record player) I ever bought! I've had that for 30 years."
We spent $180 a month for a storage unit for 3 years before I convinced him to spring clean it and get rid of the unit. It's nice not having the bill. We haven't noticed a difference at all in not having all that stuff. Of course, he still laments my tossing out of the 8 1/2" floppy disks he had (?????).
Posted by: Momma @ 3princessesmomma | April 17, 2009 at 10:59 AM
I had an off-site storage unit for 3-4 years once. We lived in a big open factory loft space that was gorgeous but had zero out-of-sight storage. It wasn't a huge inconvenience (I usually went once a week to pick-up and drop-off stuff) and we were able to renegotiate a nice monthly rate once we had been there for a years and got to know the facility managers.
Posted by: MonkeyMonk | April 18, 2009 at 08:21 AM
My wife used to work for public storage in southern new jersey and she did a TON of these! and this was over 3 years ago!
most of the time people would come clean out a space and leave one or two things in there, but still keep the stupid thing! my wife and i would often joke about paying $50 a month to store one chair in the storage space. :P
The great deal we had was that, when she became a property manager, we got an apartment that was on site for FREE!! Well...she actually just received a smaller salary to compensate the company for an excellent apartment for 2 adults and 1 child. this is something that they don't really do any more though, unfortunately, but it was great while we just had the one kid and while it lasted!
Posted by: conedude13 | April 21, 2009 at 09:55 PM