Ep 11 - Storage Units- Yay or Nay?

That’s a lot of people getting storage units. They can feel like a very easy solution to get things out of your home and store them elsewhere. You might be asking yourself if this is the right decision for you. You might have a storage unit or have some storage in your home or maybe you just want to hear my take on it – Either way is fine. We are so happy that you are here!

You can listen right here, on Apple Podcasts, or you can read the transcription below. Enjoy!

Welcome, welcome. Today I'm talking about storage units – yay or nay? The purpose of this is to decide if a storage unit is right for you. You might have a storage unit or have some storage in your home or maybe you just want to hear my take on it – Either way is fine. I am happy to rant a little bit about storage units. This episode came about because I have had this conversation with many people lately as well as over the years. I figured I would just share my thoughts here because I find some aspects of it wildly interesting. I hope you do too. if you don't and you want to skip this episode… I mean, hey. I'll never know.

Let's talk about storage units

So, they're very popular. You know they're very popular. We had some construction down the street from our home, and we were very excited to see what was coming in. We were like, Maybe it's going to be a new store. What is this going to be? Is it going to be a school? Who knows? There was this empty lot except for this kind of rundown house in the middle that did firearm training and someone bought the lot. Suddenly the house was gone and the land was being worked on and we were wondering what was going to happen.

Guess what it was? A storage unit facility. Every time we drive past it, we just make jokes. We're like,

Oh, this is so great that we have this new storage facility.

This is really needed.

It really adds to the neighborhood.

Oh, so happy for this beautiful storage unit.

Business Wire said that the global self-storage market reached a value of 51.32 billion In 2021. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to reach a global value of 71 billion by 2027. That’s a lot of people getting storage units. They can feel like a very easy solution to get things out of your home and store them elsewhere.

When are storage units a good idea?

You might be asking yourself if this is the right decision for you. Let's talk about a couple of instances when a storage unit can be great.

In 2017, my husband Corey and I decided that we were going to relocate and leave the Bay Area. I was in San Francisco for like 15 years, so we decided that we were going to relocate. In that process, we also decided to take some time off and do some traveling.

We knew that we were moving to a different city and decided to give up our apartment since we were not going to be living there anyway. Then we could save the rent for those four months. We put everything in storage here in Sacramento and we just took the clothes that we would need while we were on our travels. We had a feeling that we were going to probably end up in Sacramento, but we wanted to stay open-minded while we were on our travels. We did end up coming back to Sacramento and that was a really great use of our time and money. it made way more sense to have our things in a storage unit than to pay rent in San Francisco.

Our apartment in San Francisco was very small, so we didn’t have that much stuff anyways. Having a storage unit at that time was really, really helpful and cost-effective. We will talk about some of the reasons why that was the right decision a little bit later, but let's just say the biggest is that there was an end date in mind.

Staging your home for sale

Another instance in which I would almost encourage someone to get a storage unit is if you are moving and you are selling your home. I'm going to be honest with you. The reason why I suggest this for that particular point in time is that when staging a home for sale, most homes could stand to lose about 50% of their furniture to show really well. You want to remove personalization from your walls. You also want a space where when people look at it, the first thing they're able to do is see the possibilities. The amount of furniture we have when we're living in space versus showing in a space – generally the difference is about 50%.

There is a lot of pre-packing that I suggest people do before they show their house. There is a lot of furniture that I recommend removing from those different rooms before they take pictures when they're listing their home. A lot of times people don't have garage space or they still want to be able to show the garage without it being completely full of everything, so a storage unit can be a really good idea. You can pre-pack those items that aren't necessarily needed between the time you are listing your home and moving into the next.

As a side note, if you are moving or you have a move coming up and you want a ton of tips around that. I was recently featured in an article by the Inspection Support Network, and it's called Home Organizing Before Selling: Tips from the Experts. There are a ton of tips from a ton of different organizers, myself included. They answer questions like, How long before moving should I deep clean and declutter my home? Which room should I start in? What should I start decluttering first? Feel free to check that out. I am linking that in the show notes as well.

The recent loss of a loved one

Another instance where I would recommend a storage unit is if you inherited a lot of items from someone. Maybe somebody in your family passed and you have inherited all these things. Maybe you needed to clean out someone's home and now there are a bunch of their items at your home. Let's say it was so fresh that emotionally you don't feel ready to go through and figure out what to keep and what to let go of. I want to give you a permission slip. In that instance, sometimes a storage unit can be helpful so that you have a place to keep them and yet you are not inundated.

I do see a fair amount of homes where maybe someone passed, maybe a couple of people passed within a short period of time, and the homes are completely overrun with too much furniture and too many possessions. It feels completely overwhelming and they don't really see a way through it. For that reason, I think a storage unit could be really helpful so you have a place where you can sort and go through the items, but it's not necessarily all in your living room or your garage, or wherever the case may be. But again, we want to talk about duration. A deadline for that is going to be really important. I know that's hard to gauge on the front end, but if you want to say, Okay, let's re-assess this in six months.

Anyway, we'll go over more of that in a second.

Unique situations + small spaces

I had a client once who had a really, really cute apartment. It was small and they had a little storage, but not enough storage. They just absolutely weren't able to store all of the things that they really needed. We did a ton of purging too. A storage unit was helpful for them so they could have a place for their seasonal wardrobe items and their seasonal decor. Now they can get it and retrieve it. It wasn't going to be taking over their small apartment and that was important for them.

I also know folks who have storage units for their business or non-profit, to store inventory, to store back stock of items that they don't necessarily need all the time. Yes. Or, you know, in a non-profit case, maybe they do a chunk of their operations at home, but then they still have a lot of supplies and they just do not have the space to store it. That could be a really helpful thing to have a storage unit. The key is to set some parameters around the storage before you get the storage unit if possible.

What if I already have a storage unit?

Now, if you already have one, that's fine too. Let's just evaluate it a little bit. The key things to think about are time and money. How much are you willing to spend on this over time? How much are you willing to invest in this? That is the thing with storage units. They can be kind of a crockpot situation where you set it, you forget it, but then you really forget it. Maybe you have this payment on auto-pay, so you are not really noticing. You can look down the road and see that you have easily spent $5,000-$10,000 on this storage. That might be fine with you, depending on the situation. That might not be fine with you too. You are going to want to think about how long you are going to need the storage.

In the instance of my husband and I traveling, we had that storage unit for four to five months. We let go of the storage unit once we landed in Sacramento, found a new apartment, and then cleared it out. We were only in that apartment for about 11 months because after that we moved into our current home. It was an even smaller apartment than our previous one in San Francisco, so that was a little bit much, but we didn't want to keep the storage unit for 11 months. It was important for us to have that end date for that storage unit. Because we had done a lot of purging, the things that we did have were things that we really needed regularly, or we knew that we were going to be using shortly.

We ended up having a couple too many small tables and things in our apartment because we didn't want to just let go of furniture and then re-buy it for our home and it didn't make sense to leave it in a storage facility for almost a year.

Calculating the true cost of storage

In my almost five years as a home organizer, I have never ever decluttered a storage unit for a client. We talk about it a lot. People have it on their list of things they want to accomplish. We talk about setting sessions, but they always get moved. I have a theory that it's because it's just really easy to kick that can right on down the road. It's really, really easy to procrastinate on storage units because it's not in your face day in, day out – which is good for those reasons that we listed above.

However, often that time just really adds up. You need to ask yourself if those are items that you truly care about and if they matter to your day-to-day life, or are the items in there, things that you are keeping out of guilt, obligation, or habit?

I am definitely in the camp of keeping sentimental items. Absolutely fine, but you do want to think about at what cost. There is the literal cost of storage and then there is the emotional cost of having these things that you have been wanting to do, meaning to do, hanging over your head a little bit, just depending on what it is. There may be storage situations where nothing is hanging over your head, and that's fine too.

If this is something that is stressful to you because you wish you weren't spending money on that project. Maybe your storage unit is full of items that you haven't seen in a while or haven't missed. Maybe you can't name anything in your storage unit. I’m talking to you. I say that because it's very, very common and I think when you get to that point of feeling like you have too much stuff and realizing that there are a lot of things that you are not missing at all. This could be your sign to go through your storage unit.

As we're going through and thinking about storage, something else to consider is the storage in your home. It is the most expensive storage that you have, right? Your mortgage or your rent is going to be a lot more than your storage unit. The precious space that you have in your home, that's going to cost more than what it costs for a storage unit. I'm not saying that to encourage you to get a storage unit. I'm saying this to encourage you to think about the actual literal cost of having too much stuff.

If this is bringing up anything for you right now. If you are feeling frustrated. If you have questions, I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to reach out. DM me on Instagram. Let me know what is on your mind, and we will go from there. I want to thank you so much for tuning in today. I know this topic can be…. Interesting for some, and can be really hard for others. I'm here for you.

If you want to learn more about how I can help you head to tidyrevival.com to learn about how I work with people one on one or in our Clutter-Free Home Process course community. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you'll always have access to the latest episode. We would also love to hear your takeaways so feel free to tag us at Tidy Revival on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok.

The Tidy Revival Podcast is written and hosted by Carly Adams. It is edited by Brittany McLean. The title song, Maverick, is by Dresden The Flamingo.

And until next time, remember that…