photo credit: RobotSkirts

As our society gets more and more stuff, storage units become a viable option to keep stuff we aren’t using right now but aren’t ready to get rid of.  What do you do when you have too much stuff to keep at home?  You rent a storage unit, right?  This may be a great idea to immediately help clear the clutter but most likely it won’t change the way you collect and save stuff.  A better solution may be to downsize.

A good friend called me a couple of weeks ago and asked if I could come over with my camera and take some photos of his stuff so he could sell it.  I met him at a storage place near his house where he rents a storage unit for $75 a month.  I expected that he would have a huge unit for that price but it only measured about 8′ by 10′.  Inside he had an older couch, a hand-me-down dining room set, two dressers, a nightstand and about twenty boxes of miscellaneous stuff.  I photographed everything for him and we got it all listed on Craigslist.  The total asking price for all of his stuff came to $450 but there was no telling if he would get his asking price.  I couldn’t believe it but he had been paying rent to store his stuff for almost two years.  That’s $1,800 out of his pocket to store about $400 bucks worth of stuff.  Ridiculous if you ask me.  He would have been better off donating these items and getting a tax deductible receipt than storing them for two years.

Do you have items in storage that you never use?  Maybe you have stuff at home that you could get rid of to make room for the stuff in storage.  Why would you pay your hard earned money to keep stuff you don’t use?  Sell it, donate it, give it to a relative or just throw it away.  You can almost always find a replacement for whatever it is you are storing at a later date if you decide you need it.

Your Daily 15 -Take some time this weekend and go to your storage unit.  Write down everything in there (if you can get to it) or just the items you can actually see.  Bring a camera and photograph any items you might want to sell and put them online on Craigslist or eBay or list them in the local paper or Penny Saver.   The goal is to clear out that storage unit as quickly as possible and start saving the money you used to spend on storage.  If you have large items you might want to have a storage unit sale if your facility allows it then you let the buyers come to you.

Start saving hundreds of dollars a year instead of storing the items you will never use again or can easily be replaced.  An exercise machine you just had to have may have cost you $1,000 but if you look in the paper it could possibly be replaced for pennies on the dollar.  Sell it now and get something for it instead of spending even more money each year to have it sit unused.  Sure, it will sting a bit when you only get a few bucks for something you spent a lot of money.  Think about the future and the fact you will have more money in your pocket to get the things you really need.

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