Unclutterer

1. Posted by Amy - 02/02/2010

   I heard this episode when it aired and it brought forth the same feelings of horror that I experience after watching an episode of “Hoarders.”

   I’ve always said that self-storage is God’s way of telling you you’ve got too much crap. Learn to live with what space you have, no matter how modest (exceptions of course for temporary situations like moves).

2. Posted by Julie - 02/02/2010

   I never knew what happened to self-storage stuff either. I suppose I just assumed it stayed there.

   Interesting radio segment. I’ve known about stuff like PropertyRoom.com for a while, a site where items confiscated by the police are auctioned off. But on that site, you can see each item, and there’s a description. To bid on an entire storage locker, sight unseen, just seems odd to me.

3. Posted by laura - 02/02/2010

   i felt the same way when i heard this episode. if i need a place to store it that’s in a facility, i definitely don’t need it!

4. Posted by Kim - 02/02/2010

   I can’t stop thinking about how much time and effort must go into processing through all this stuff, I understand the ‘mining’ mentality that must motivate the buyers, but there must be SO MUCH work to do after the deal is done! The kind of work I loathe doing with my own stuff! I can’t imagine doing it with someone else’s stuff.

   I once used a storage unit when I went from a 2 bedroom apartment to a 1br apartment. I think the only thing that would bring me to do that again would be catastrophe, or building our own house.

5. Posted by *Pol - 02/02/2010

   storage units are depressing.
   My mom had one for years that held some gardening crap. She was paying through the nose every month on a bunch of stuff worth maybe $300.
   My father in law put all of his mom’s belongings in a big storage unit when she passed on, and almost lost the unit to auction. My husband and I stepped in (at significant financial hardship) and paid the outstanding rent. Then we closed the unit immediately and took possession of the contents. Antique family heirloom furniture, a full set of china, boxes of family photos all almost lost to the family forever (along with other furniture, bags of clothes, boxes of kitchen crap and tonnes of other effects that should have gone to goodwill NOT a storage unit). It was a major hassle dealing with it and was awkward having to “bail out” the FIL on it. We don’t talk about it.
   Thank having been said, the idea of BUYING a mysterious locker is strangely compelling, I might have to sit in on one of those auctions if I can find one.

6. Posted by Marinda - 02/02/2010

   We had a small, closet size unit for one year. After paying 600 dollars to store Christmas and holiday stuff, we went through it and got rid of and did a complete overhaul. While I come to regret the loss of money, the lesson I learned is invaluable.

   I give to thrift store regularly, I sort and throw out now and my home and my life are far less cluttered with crap. Hard expensive lesson to learn, but considering some people never learn it, well it was worth the price.

7. Posted by Loren - 02/02/2010

   I think in general if you can afford to pay to put something in storage you can afford to give it away. I heard this story on NPR a while ago and it was one of those moments that I swore I would NEVER use a storage unit. I have some attic space in my apartment right now but I’m determined not to store things there, because anything that I use that rarely I don’t need in my life right now.
   I find the idea of bidding on one of these spaces strangely compelling though, I image it might be EASIER to go through someone else stuff because there wouldn’t really be any emotional ties.

8. Posted by Kathryn Fenner - 02/02/2010

   I think the only way to ever use those storage units is if you have a date certain when you will close them out–examples– you are redecorating and will give the old stuff to your child in x time when he or she gets old enough; a loved one died and you have to do something with the stuff and want to wait the recommended one year before pitching everything (but do pitch the true junk); you are going to buy a second home in x time and are putting extra stuff from your home aside….

   but you have to stick to your closing date and presort what goes in–don’t just dump it all in!

   My inlaws used to have two storage units as well as a fully loaded two car garage and their basement and an inlaw apartment, all stuffed. They enjoyed spending their days visiting their stuff, sorting it, and generally “playing” with it. They are still rocking along at 90+ in excellent health, so I guess it worked for them. My brother-in-law intervened and made them reduce their holdings and move to smaller, more manageable digs. They have restocked somewhat. We may find that they have numerous units going when they die.

9. Posted by Alix - 02/02/2010

   An interesting story, but this segment reminded me of how much I can’t stand NPR, with its monotone hosts who sound as though they’re reading overly earnest high-school essays on How Bad American Society Is. No thanks.

10. Posted by Fat Bob - 02/02/2010

    Google Reader attached an advert for self-storage to this rss item

11. Posted by Cat - 02/02/2010

    I listened to this segment on the way to work this morning (via the podcast). I found it really creepy and like others, cannot imagine what would motivate somebody to bid on somebody else’s abandoned junk. The likelihood of a serious score seems extremely remote, whereas the likelihood of days of days of hard, unappetizing work with virtually no return seems pretty high. I just don’t get it.

    But I also don’t get why most people rent storage units in the first place. I can’t imagine being that attached to so much stuff, most of which is rubbish. It would be cheaper & easier to get rid of it (donate it) and buy new when circumstances changed, unless the stuff is really awesome (and from the This American Life piece that doesn’t seem to be the rule).

    The only person I know who has used one moved overseas for about a year, and recovered all of his stuff when he returned. He lived in an apartment that he didn’t want to return to, otherwise he probably would have sublet it with all his stuff in it. He was fairly well-off and had a lot of high-end furniture, so it made sense to store it. But I would imagine this sort of siutation is kind of unusual.

12. Posted by Colleen Wainwright - 02/02/2010

    I can tell you why some people put their stuff into storage: because their fortunes change and they’re assuming–hoping? praying?–they’ll change back.

    My mother put all of her furniture and household items in storage when her fortunes took a turn for the worse and she had to move in (with my two younger sisters) with her parents for the second or third time. (So you see, she’d done it temporarily before…)

    Sadly, things never turned up enough that she could get the stuff out; I wish she’d come to me earlier b/c all of my childhood papers that I’d left there when I went off to college were lost forever. I couldn’t care less about the knickknacks and crap and even the rather expensive furniture, but it still kills me that I can’t trace my trajectory as a writer back to when I first started writing. The high school journals, especially, I would have liked to keep (even though yes, they’re probably full of dreadfully maudlin, purple prose).

    I get that attachment takes all forms. Believe me, I’m more than a little aware of my own attachment issues around this lost stuff.

    But just to say it ain’t all about “Hoarders” and blindly hanging on. I’ll bet there are all kinds of stories locked away in those places.

13. Posted by infmom - 02/02/2010

    Well, my daughter and her college roommate did put all their apartment’s contents into a storage unit over the summer between school years, but we, she, the roommate and her parents showed up right on time to get the stuff out of the unit and into their new apartment in the fall.

    One of my brothers lost a lot of belongings (including some things he’d borrowed from me that I would have been happy to take back) when he quit paying rent on a storage unit. But you don’t have to have a storage unit for things like that to happen. My mother never really got the idea that money has to come from a job and not from someone magically sending it to you, so when she got evicted (for the umpty-umpth time) she abandoned a lot of things that I would have liked to have had–including a wonderful full-length portrait painted of my mother in her prime. I kept asking her and asking her over the years where that portrait was, because I wanted it, and it wasn’t till nearly the day she died that she admitted she’d just walked off and left it in one of her apartments in San Diego.

    Sigh.

    I am re-reading the chapter in Unclutter Your Life that deals with sentimental objects. Clearly I have a lot of work to do in that area, and it’s hard giving stuff up when the reason you cling to it is because your parents kept tossing out the things that mattered to you as a child. But I’m working hard to overcome that.

14. Posted by HappyDogs - 02/02/2010

    I have a friend that bids on storage units that have been abandoned. I thought it was odd until she got one that had the entire contents of a closed high-end restaurant. Fabulous pots, knifes, etc. She’s had other great finds as well. I guess that and the adventure is the reason she does it. It’s a more profitable form of gambling than going to a casino.

15. Posted by momofthree - 02/02/2010

    My mind got stuck on the “cobwebs” comment. Meaning, the items haven’t been moved in “awhile”. That and finding dead rats…EWWW, down right GROSS.

    I agree, SOMETIMES there is very some good stuff to be had, but I am not willing to part with my hard earned money for someone’s else CRAP.

    I am guessing that once a person has purchased the contents, it must be hauled away that day..don’t remember hearing about that.

    Pay hard earned money, physical labor to load a truck, and then unload and sort–on top of a 40 to 50 hour work week? No thanks…

    And what kind of fees are there, on top of the winning bid? I would think that the storage facility is losing money when a person only pays once for the load in the space…and they could have been making money for months on end from the rental…

    How long a period is there for non payment of monthly rent? And, how many times do they try to collect? I am guessing the fees would cover the cost of postage to contact the original renters to get paid.

    Did I ask enough questions….Anyone live in the northwest burbs of Chicago that’s been to a storage facility auction and gotten anything worth while for their bidding?

16. Posted by Abeline - 02/02/2010

    I got a kick out of the crystal/Crystal mix up.

17. Posted by Amandine - 02/02/2010

    Between watching “Hoarders”, and listening to this story with the attendant dead rats and mouse droppings, I don’t think I can ever buy anything secondhand again.

18. Posted by Sue - 02/02/2010

    My son’s Boy Scout troop was given the contents of 2 units of abandoned stuff to sort, purge and sell at their fund-raising garage sale.

    The useless, broken, dirty and junky crap that people were paying to store was appalling! I was inspired to come home and do a major decluttering frenzy.

19. Posted by HappyDogs - 02/02/2010

    @momofthree The deal varies with the storage facility, but there’s a lot of info here on the Q&A page:
    http://www.storageauctionexperts.com/
    These are the auction guys interviewed in the show and the auctioneer my friend follows around.

    My friend’s a semi-retired grandma and she just wants to keep busy. Like me/us, she’s good at sorting through stuff, finding the good bits, and getting rid of the rest.

20. Posted by Beverly D - 02/02/2010

    I have a storage unit. It contains my grandmother’s furniture, all antiques. My daughter and grandson are living in her house now and I stored the furniture to keep it from getting ruined. At some point I will figure out to whom it gets bequeathed, or else the grandson will be old enough not to ruin it and it will be returned to the house. But for now he needs to live in a house where it doesn’t matter if he writes on something or there is a scratch.

21. Posted by chacha1 - 02/02/2010

    Right on, Loren: “I think in general if you can afford to pay to put something in storage you can afford to give it away.”

    My inclination would be to store ONLY the things we LOVE and that we could not replace with an acceptable approximation. That’s about two rooms of furniture in our case, mostly vintage Asian. I would rather learn to live with less, in less space, than pay indefinitely on the off chance that various “stuff” might find its way back into our space.

    We are currently weighing the benefits of downsizing (we won’t if we can negotiate a new lease) and I know my DH would be inclined to store some things rather than get rid of them. Me, however … here’s a stupid little story. He stored his motorcycle for 5+ years, paying over that time nearly $7K for the storage. The damned thing is only WORTH $7K. Now it’s in our garage, but he still doesn’t ride it. Sigh!

    I would not store our three-seater La-Z-Boy sofa. Yes, we like it, but we don’t love it, it’s huge, and if we were in a smaller place for three years or more, we could buy a new one for what it would cost to store. Same goes for the big clunky aquarium, the big clunky file cabinet, the big clunky bookshelf, the big clunky convertible futon, and a bunch of other stuff.

    Good thing we don’t HAVE to downsize. Can you smell the brimstone??

22. Posted by Tonya - 02/02/2010

    It takes a certain kind of person to buy other people’s storage units, my brother-in-law being one. He owns an auction house and buying and selling is in his blood (he’s a third generation auctioneer). While I can’t think of a much worse way to spend my time then dealing with other people’s crap, he has an eye for things and has made very good money on things from storage units. It is definitely a risk, but a risk that can really pay off.

    I’ve found that working at an auction house is an excellent motivator to not accumulate too much stuff. Watching people hover around boxlots like vultures and seeing all the useless crap people happily bid on makes me determined not to go down that road!

23. Posted by Another Deb - 02/02/2010

    My dear departed Aunt Edna was an expert at finding boxes of stuff at yard sales for 50 cents and finding some re-sellable item in them worth 5 bucks. If she was here now, she might be attending these auctions.

    I am not averse to treasure hunting at the Goodwill, or on occasion, dumpster diving or taking things left on curbs. If I was really good at Craigslisting or e-Baying, this might appeal to me. But for right now, I am just thankful that none of my stuff is in storage.

    Here in Arizona, we had been seeing a lot of transitional people who were taking stuff from their out-of-state U-Hauls into storage while they get financing to move out of apartments into their McMansions.

    The economy has arrested that migration, but perhaps the foreclosure cycle has kept self-storage going. In that case I don’t think I want to deal with people who bailed on their stuff. It reminds me of the used car dealer I used to know who sold the kind of cars that come in with the floors papered with scratch-off lottery tickets.

24. Posted by queen stuss - 02/02/2010

    We used a managed storage facility when we were living overseas for two years. We chose it because we were only paying for the actual space we used. But it was very depressing putting things in and thinking ‘but what if I don’t want this in two years time?’ I wish I had known at the time that it was OKAY if I got rid of those things.
    Because what was more depressing was pulling it out of storage and giving away clothes that didn’t fit anymore, books that I was never going to read again anyway, and other boxes of crap.
    I do remember being perplexed when we put out stuff in storage and the owner of the facility said there was one man whose things had been in storage for 12 years. 12 years? Why was he even keeping it?

25. Posted by Melanie - 02/02/2010

    We are considering a move and I am ramping up my decluttering efforts to avoid the waste of renting a storage unit just to show the house.

26. Posted by tabatha - 02/02/2010

    on of my coworkers and her mom does this, they buy storage units and sell the stuff on E-bay that is worth selling. she even got a Wii out of one of the storage units one time.

27. Posted by Jack - 02/02/2010

    I guess what interested me was the excitement the buyers had with the opportunity to make money off other people’s stuff. I kept imagining the people who paid good money to store stuff that they could not part with for some reason.

    I remember watching my parents storing stuff in the attic or basement because it “was still good” and “someone might be able to use it someday”. After our parents passed away my sisters and I put all the junk outside with a “free” sign on it – folks couldn’t take it away fast enough simply because it was free. It probably would’ve made more sense to give it away back then rather than have it sitting around for 30 years.

28. Posted by Lesley - 02/02/2010

    Definitely agree with the post above about a “date certain.”

    When we put our house on the market, we rented a storage unit. We were going into a larger house, so the last thing we wanted to do was get rid of furniture that made our current house seem smaller or more cluttered.

    We put the furniture into storage, then carefully boxed up absolutely everything that wasn’t a total necessity. Boy, our house looked fantastic for showings. And it sold in less than two months.

    We waited until about a month after moving into the new house to empty the storage unit. That way, we had time to settle in and decide what we really needed. In the end, we eliminated about one-third of the items in storage, which was awesome.

29. Posted by Claycat - 02/03/2010

    I have to say, I might be tempted by a possible treasure, but I’m not dealing well with stuff right now. When I finally get up the nerve to post things on eBay, I might decide that’s something I would like to do. But, I don’t think so. There are other things I’d rather do. I have read about some amazing finds, though.

30. Posted by Steve R. - 02/03/2010

    I know someone who had his stuff in storage for some 10+ years. He would not get rid of it. He had that someday I will need it mentality. There were the original tires from his car of 15 years if he needed them, clothes he could never fit into, and boxes upon boxes of paper. When he finally emptied it, he had paid over $15,000 to store just trash. It is sad being attached to things that you never see or get any pleasure out of.

31. Posted by HelofaMess - 02/03/2010

    We live in Beijing and we have a storage locker in Australia (where my husband is from). Inside there is some furniture that I love and will go into our house once we return (we rent in Beijing) and some furniture from his first marriage that I really dislike (1st marriage aside). Once we get back I’ll go through and junk it but it’s just not feasible at this stage so we’re wasting money and space on stuff we probably wont ever use.

    Almost 8 years now it’s been in storage but I do promise we’ve never been late on a payment!

32. Posted by Viv - 02/03/2010

    My brother put his belongings in a storage unit just before he disappeared. (for a long time this was the only evidence we had that the disappearance was planned) My mom paid the monthly bill because a collection company called looking for my brother and guilted her into doing it. Finally, after finding out that my mom had paid almost $1000, we talked her into moving the stuff to her house.

    Here’s the kicker. Although my mom was paying the bill all along and the storage company knew that, she had NO right to my brother’s stuff. I imagine it went to auction someplace.

33. Posted by Rosa - 02/03/2010

    My parents put some stuff into storage – some furniture they love and a few hobby items – when they started living in their RV full time.

    I’m just grateful they didn’t ask me to store it. And it’s not a houseful of stuff – it’s the few items they are sure they will want when they settle somewhere permenently, that I didn’t want. They have fulltimer friends whose kids are just swamped with stuff they are storing for their parents and I’m grateful not to be one of those kids.

34. Posted by Sarah - 02/03/2010

    I once worked for a self storage software company, converting the company’s old software to the new version and converting data from competing software to our software when a customer wanted to switch.
    Part of the conversion process required that I “close the day.” That’s when lien notices print, late charges are assessed, etc.
    Once, I closed the day on a property, and a lien notice for MC Hammer printed. For real.

35. Posted by Fred E. - 02/03/2010

    I had a discussion with the owner of a self-storage property in a medium-sized town in a relatively poor area a few years ago. He said most of the stuff people had in storage there was just junk. They would clean out their garage or basement and put all of the stuff in storage. They would pay the bill for 6 months or a year and then stop. Finally he would open the units and sell the stuff but usually it was just junk, mismatched plates and broken faded plastic toys and boxes of Good Housekeeping magazines and old dirty upholstered furniture, stuff that never should have been been thrown away in the first place.

36. Posted by JC - 02/03/2010

    I purchased furniture at one of these auctions when first married and quite bit short on income. It wasn’t a closed unit thing, though some pallets had to be purchased as lots. Nothing was auctioned until at least four months after the last payment was made and several certified notices were sent.

    For $100 I bought a wardrobe, large dresser with mirror, and a bed table. I didn’t know whose stuff it was, but in the wardrobe my husband found photos of his brother walking at his HS graduation 15 years earlier. We did try to contact the people we could recognize but were never able to locate them. I finally ditched the album.

    I have used storage a couple times but only for temporary storage. I rented a closet sized storage unit during the summers when I traveled back to Alaska from Utah during college.

    We also rented a unit when we were building our house. Our contractor had bailed on us so we stored 12,000 pounds of antique reclaimed flooring for 12 months until we were finally ready for it.

37. Posted by Lou - 02/03/2010

    When we went to Iceland on my Fulbright, my husband & I stored the contents (ALL the contents) of our 3 BR w garage apartment. The plan was, that when we came home, we would take things out as we needed them for a year, then ditch the rest. Part one worked fine; we furnished our new space with basics. Then my husband’s heart disease got suddenly much worse, and between a full-time job, his care and real life, I just kept writing those $125 checks every month for 3 years. When he died, my son and nephew helped me to clean out the (yes cobwebs & mouse droppings, plus mildew) mess & put what was worth keeping into a smaller storage unit.

    For another year, I paid $75 a month, til I was settled in a new rowhouse. We hauled the contents of the smaller unit into my new home, and the second box I opened had $1000 worth of savings bonds, with my son as beneficiary. Feeling obligated not to miss another treasure trove, i spent my spare time for the next 6 months emptying the 86 remaining boxes.

    Bottom lines: The sorting was a useful opportunity to sort through my feelings about love and loss; I found a few “treasures” of family memories worth keeping. My son’s small windfall was about 1/5 of what was spent. So totally Not Worth It!

38. Posted by rae - 02/03/2010

    I keep remembering a story that was on the news in the 80′s when I was in college. Guy has a storage unit, his second wife keeps questioning why do we have this? She pays the bills, finally she stops paying that bill. When the owner of the storage unit opened it he found the bodies of the first wife and their children sealed up in 50 gallon drums. I have googled to see what ever came of the story, only to find pages of stories of bodies in storage units. Now there’s something I would not want to find.

    I can see times a storage until would be useful. But most of the people I know use it as a way to avoid dealing with stuff. I once heard that hoarding is an inability to make decisions. That has helped me to let go of things.

39. Posted by Anonymous Storage Unit Renter - 02/03/2010

    There are people willing to bid on abandoned storage units without having seen what’s inside??!!

    This sounds like a great way to unclutter!

    1. Rent storage unit.

    2. Put unwanted stuff into storage unit.

    3. Stop paying rent on storage unit.

    4. Have unwanted stuff confiscated!

    It’s a win-win situation.

    Depending on what you want to get rid of, it may be cheaper than going to a landfill or a recycle center.

    Thank you so much for this story. Now I know what to do with that old Soviet mainframe computer (which I can no longer get vacuum tubes for) I got on eBay 10 years ago, the car engine that I never got around to putting in a car I never got around to buying, and that barrel of toxic sludge I can’t legally dispose of. I thought they would be valuable collectibles one day, but you can guess how those “investments” turned out.

40. Posted by Ajana - 02/03/2010

    There never used to such storage facilities in Hong Kong (where I live) but, in recent years, they have sprung up all over the place. They offer very small spaces (lockers) to very large ones. Many are climate and humidity controlled.

    The typical Hong Kong home is 450 sq ft (gross). Many (sometimes multi-generational) families live in much smaller places. People were used to having what they needed and living in small homes.

    There were the expats who would arrive here with a container full of stuff which would not fit into their 2,000 sq ft place (actual size may be 1,500). But they still managed.

    Obviously times have changed. Why else would people need these storage spaces when they never did before? More stuff? Not willing to get rid of things like they used to? Quite honestly, when I saw the advertising for the first one, my heart sank. I saw it as a sign that people are accumulating too much stuff and I’ve been down that road. Fortunately I didn’t have a storage space into which to pass the problem.

41. Posted by Linda - 02/04/2010

    What a sad story….

    And what makes me even more sad is knowing my parents are one of these families that pay hard-earned cash for storing junk.

    My dad used to rent his own office somewhere and had all this office furniture to go with it.. then times got tough and he decided to start working from home, in a very small study, so the furniture went to storage.

    It’s been sitting there for like 10 years now, which means that it’s taken up at least $10.000 to store furniture maybe worth half of that! He’s now close to his retiring age with absolutely no hopes of renting an office again….

    I kept telling them to sell the stuff on ebay.. which probably would have resulted in saving 10.000 plus earning half of the money of the stuff back (say, 2000) – thus a world cruise for both of them….

    Storage -after smoking- is the second best way to waste your money, I’d say..

    greetings from the netherlands!

42. Posted by Richard | RichardShelmerdine.com - 02/04/2010

    I really think that people are just getting rid of their stuff and owning less. IT’s a great thing!

43. Posted by gypsy packer - 02/05/2010

    Homeless people rent storage lockers. One man slept in the parks, and changed clothes and ate at his storage. It took me five years to get my music out of storage and digitized, but was worth it to me. I have heirlooms stored for a niece’s future.
    Any flea market will feature one or more people selling abandoned storage locker contents. I’ve purchased TV’s and furniture for a motel owner, mason jars and a coffee grinder for myself, and I’ve seen designer clothing and great decorator items sold for a pittance. Coats from summer sales often are donated to homeless programs for winter distribution, and tools go fast.

44. Posted by Erin - 02/05/2010

    This really got me thinking. We live in a condo and pay $80 per month for a storage unit in our building. In the storage unit we keep our camping equipment (tents, sleeping bags, etc.), our xmas decorations (4 boxes) and then things my husband can’t seem to part with (notebooks from grad school, etc.). We are paying almost $1000 per year to store xmas decorations and camping supplies?! We could rebuy it all every year for that price. While that sounds like a waste of money (and bad for the environment) to rebuy ornaments or tents every year – it isn’t any more of a waste of money that paying to store it. Hmm… things to think about.

45. Posted by Christine - 02/05/2010

    I didn’t listen to the podcast yet, but I had a coworker who moved cross country. Apparently, her “mover” (scammer) put her stuff in a storage locker, didn’t pay, and she had to come back to try to get it at auction–family photos, etc. Fortunately, she contacted a local TV station who covered it, which encouraged the storage owner to negotiate with her.

46. Posted by Dawn - 02/17/2010

    I manage a storage facility. It’s true that most of what is stored is junk, but in my experience, most of the auction buyers are professional resellers and do it as a full time living (a modest one). For them, it’s a gamble and a treasure hunt, but they generally come out ahead — due to lots of practice.

    We once sold a unit that had $10,000 in cash stored inside. More commonly, buyers dig through trash looking for a Wii, or appliances that could be refurbished and sold. Many auction buyers will return photo albums and such to us. Most renters never come back to us to retrieve them, however, even though we try to contact them.

    A well maintained storage facility won’t have rodent and pest issues (though cobwebs are inevitable). And, to Anonymous who thinks that storing is cheaper than taking to a landfill — most facilities do send renters to collections, if they end up going to auction because they don’t pay.

    I don’t see it as morbid at all. Occasionally an auction sale is sad, because someone’s struggling and they lose their ‘precious-to-them’ things due to financial hardship (and we really try to work with those people, the auction is a LAST resort) — but the vast majority abandoned their stuff because they looked at how much they’d spent on it and realized they could buy new at that price. They decide to ‘cut their losses’ but are too lazy (or insert excuse here) to actually empty the unit so they just leave it for us to handle; legally, that means auction.

47. Posted by Elaine - 02/20/2010

    Fascinating. Especially when the bidders share their tips on how to assess the probable personality/motives/character of the former owners, based on the condition of the stuff (rummaged-looking vs. neatly stacked).

    As a side note, I am one person who wishes she’d thought of using self-storage. About a decade ago, my husband and I made a very ill-advised move to a distant state, looking for better job prospects. We had just bought a new living room suite about a year before. When we arrived in the city and secured an apartment, we discovered that our large sofa and loveseat were simply too big to get up the 3 flights of stairs. We left it in the truck, and when we returned the truck, the owner offered to buy the items. He gave us a “down payment” of $50, and of course, he disappeared with our furniture. We ended up with a wimpy little futon and have since only been able to afford a used sofa, which wasn’t anywhere near as nice as what we surrendered. The idea of self-storage only occurred to us years later, after we’d given up and moved back to the warmer climate we’d started in.

48. Posted by Dave - 03/05/2010

    Does anyone know what the average price to buy an abandoned storage locker is? Even just a rough guess???

49. Posted by mother of four - 03/09/2010

    I have seen so many couples save and store things that they think their children will want in the future, but when the time comes, the kids don’t want any of it. They already have anything they need. When I do the wash, I mend things right then and there and any clothes that I wore last week and did not like wearing go directly from the laundry to a bag intended for Goodwill. Same with other stuff.

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