Sunday, May 11, 2008

The Problem With Storage

The enormous problems in the US housing market has an even sadder story about what to do with your stuff while you try to get back on your feet, as featured in this news story.

I put my stuff in storage while I was in university and went to jobs in Ontario and Alberta. What started as a 4 month plan turned into 2 years. It was probably a good learning experience in that I would strongly advise selling and tossing stuff as opposed to storing it.

You pull the stuff out in two years and much of it you didn't miss, so why have it? And then unless your stuff is high quality, just sell it and buy something used to replace it when you need it.

at Sunday, May 11, 2008

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3 comments:

GS751 said...

PBS did a documentary about Storage and all the money made there in the 80's.

5/11/08, 7:45 PM
Chris Thompson said...

Your experience (i.e. four months turning into two years) is actually the norm for the industry. A lot of people expect to be there for only a few months, but the average storage tenancy is around two years. A $600 expected expenditure ends up being $3600. It's a lucrative business model.

5/17/08, 8:34 AM
Deborah said...

Yes, I was in university and going to work in Ontario for 4 months, and then coming back. The thing was, it was so much easier to keep my stuff in storage when I figured I would do another co-op semester in another province. I ended up doing 3 co-op terms in other provinces, going away for 4 months, then back for school for 4 months.

And then, I just didn't take my stuff out of storage until I knew where I was going to be.

That was in the late 80s and I did shop around a bit so I think it was about $60/month. But, two years later I probably got rid of 20% of what I stored as soon as I was taking it out.

5/19/08, 4:48 PM

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