Why the Clutter Hidden in Your Storage Unit Needs to Be Exposed

There’s yet another “personal storage facility” being built in a town near me.  This one has a tower in the center and palm trees around the perimeter fence.  It looks like a small Mediterranean-area walled town with a citadel.

Not only is it a rather exotic design for a storage place, it’s only about 1/2 mile down the road from another, older one.

Did you know that in the U.S. there are more than twice as many storage centers as high schools?  There are more storage centers than McDonalds and Starbucks combined?  Did you know personal storage has been one of the fastest-growing sectors of real estate investment for the past four decades?

What’s more, storage centers are where people turn when their spare rooms, garages, basements, attics, and sheds are already full.  I’d say that if you can’t park your car in the garage or you no longer have a usable guest bedroom, you’re kind of missing the point.  But if you’re paying for additional storage space for stuff you don’t have room for (or even need, obviously, because it’s in a box three miles away, locked behind a gate, guarded by a tower), then something is very, very wrong.

If the storage is temporary because your military unit is being deployed overseas, or you’ve inherited the contents of your parents’ house and haven’t had a chance to deal with it yet, or you’re living in your motor home while your dream home is being constructed, then okay.  That makes sense.  It’s a tool, and a useful one.

The operative word here is temporary.  If you’re an empty nester who’s downsized to an apartment, but you haven’t also downsized your stuff (hence the storage unit), your work isn’t done.  I doubt you’re going to upsize again, so you need to pare down your belongings and stop paying to store what you don’t need and didn’t choose to have in your apartment.  Maybe someone else would be happy to have it – but please don’t guilt your kids into taking it if they don’t want to.

Do you see how much we don’t want to deal with all of the things we keep buying and accumulating?  We’d rather pay an average of more than $100 every month to store it, as reported by recnationstorage.com.  I’d invest in one of those storage places (maybe this cool new one with the tower) if it wouldn’t be so hypocritical.  “Minimalist Blogger Makes a Killing on Storage Industry Investments” would not make a good headline.

Storage units are the very definition of “out of sight, out of mind,” and that clutter will sit around until you die and your kids have to deal with it.  Believe me, they won’t be happy with you.

You don’t need mementos to bring back happy memories.

Now, maybe you’re hanging on to things you don’t need (and apparently never look at) because of nostalgia.  You’re not alone.  We believe these things bring back all our happy memories, and that without them we’d somehow be less – less able to remember, less who we are.

But who we are today is fluid, changing all the time as new thoughts, knowledge, and experiences enter our lives.  So that old stuff filling off-site storage is not only static, but we don’t even need it to jog those oh-so-precious memories.

Don’t believe me?

Tell me, can you remember your first car?  The one you got by working that cruddy part-time job your senior year of high school?  It took just about every penny you earned to keep gas in the tank, and when it developed that suspicious noise, you had to beg your dad for a loan to fix it.  But you were proud of the thing all the same, and felt a huge amount of maturity and freedom because you had your own means of transportation.  Maybe you even gave your beater a name, just because it was so important to your life.  My car was Bessie – what did you call yours?

Okay, you remember that possession that brought you such joy.  Tell me, is it rusting in your driveway right now?

No?

But you’ll never forget it, will you?  The same way you’ll never forget your parents, grandparents, your honeymoon trip to Italy, or what your tiny, precious, first-born child smelled and felt like when you brought her home from the hospital.  Or the huge upwelling of love and responsibility you felt for her.

Your need to keep all those old, useless things was always about the feelings they inspired.  So keep the feelings and release the stuff.

(Obviously, this doesn’t apply to heirloom-quality items in good condition.  Those you can sell after your now-grown child tells you she doesn’t want them.  She really doesn’t – please, respect her decision.)

Here’s my prescription. 

Get a truck, empty out your storage unit, cancel your rental contract, and move all that stuff into your living room, kitchen, and bedroom.  Right in the middle of where you live.  Now you have to deal with it.  You’re either going to make the time to go through everything, or you’re going to want that stuff hauled away pronto.  (I recommend that you call 1-800-GOT-JUNK.  It’s what I would do.) 

Et, voilà!  You have just learned an important decluttering secret – choose what you want to keep and declutter the rest.  Obviously, what’s in your house now is what you want to keep.  The stuff in storage is the stuff you didn’t choose.

I wonder what we could use this nifty new storage center for if it wasn’t filled with unneeded bric-a-brac?  It’d be a shame to waste that cool tower.

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About the Author: Karen Trefzger is a writer, singer, teacher, wife, mother, and grandmother who has been choosing a simpler life for over 20 years. She is the author of several books about minimalism, and blogs at Maximum Gratitude Minimal Stuff.