[Misc] Hoarding stuff with a storage company

[zefarelly]

I am getting better and getting rid of stuff 'I mayneed someday' but have cleared so many car and scooter parts in recent years I've actually had to buy some back . . . . I am quite selective with my tat though. At least I think so. I do still have tat to offload . . .

I've recently been looking at a stash of vintage shirts thinking a few photo's would make more sense, especially as they don't fit me any more!

CD's have been slowly decreasing, records fluctuate . . .I dont see the point in keeping records I don't much like as library pieces as everything so easily available Everywhere. . . Same goes for CD's I have on vinyl, as they're on a mem stick or spotify etc and thats good for the car.

the thought of paying to store boxes of tat horrifies me . . .although I have rented garages over the years, until relatively recently . . . . Now the rule is one in one out . . . .

The storage model for a business is great though, quite literally money for old rope!

 

[BevBHA]

Because....we are not.....all the same.

Gotcha, hope your kids have fun throwing away your school books that you’ve kept, never to be seen again!

 

[Wozza]

Gotcha, hope your kids have fun throwing away your school books that you’ve kept, never to be seen again!

I like the way Mike pointed out that we're all different - and you've retorted with a single, very specific assumption about what he might have in storage.

 

[WATFORD zero]

When the kids were young, I boarded the whole loft for 'the kids Scalextric'. Big Mistake.

20 odd years later I now have a huge loft full of crap that 'might come in useful'. There's a small area with the Xmas trees and stuff and another with the skiing stuff. I know there's a few boxes of scalextric, some diving stuff, a collection of musical instruments, but still I have no idea what the other 90% of the loft is filled with. And having put the Xmas stuff back up Friday we had the annual 'we must clear this loft out chat'

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I'm currently going through all the shit in my workshop that I've kept "just in case". I've come across a box of empty beer bottles, does anyone know why I've kept them.

To recycle?

Incidentally my dad turned his garage into a workshop. It was immaculate. Beautifully curated engineering parts, screws and malarkey kept pristine in jars with the lids screwed into wooden shelves above, all labelled.
A lathe.
And paintings done by his dad, a Boer war vet.

Never mess with carefully curated memories.

 

[Wozza]

Footnote: I still have stuff at my dad’s place, 50 miles away. I left in 1992.

 

[alanfp]

There seems to be some confusion about what this thread is about - there's a massive difference between paying a third party storage fees and hoarding stuff in a loft (which costs nothing).

So yes, we stored some bulky stuff in storage (spare bed, cross-trainer. punch-bag) until we moved to a bigger house. The cost for 15 months storage plus transport was so high we probably could have bought new stuff once we'd moved.

Actually, those three items were never used again. But we had space in the new garage to keep them, so they are still there!

 

[AZ Gull]

Anyone else do this?

I have for 10+ years... but finally about to cancel.

Easier now kids are older, fewer toys etc.

God knows how much I've spent storing stuff, much of which I'm now happy to clear out/recycle.

Also: just found a floppy disk with games and schoolwork - from 1985.

In 2000 I was living in Brierley Hill but fed up with my job. After taking some careers advice I decided to return to university to do a Masters course. I got accommodation on campus for the duration so I put the contents of my rented house into storage in the expectation that in one year's time I would get a job (somewhere) and extricate my belongings.

A few months after finishing my course, and still figuring out what my next career move would be, completely out of the blue I got the opportunity to move to the US.

Yep......almost 25 years later, all my stuff is still in storage in the midlands

 

[Peacehaven Wild Kids]

But it will take a massive bloke with arms of steel to prize my thousands of CDs (stored alphabetically) off me.

I have two of those hard suitcases (they’re no longer practical) full of CDs in the back of my garden shed.
Thinking about it I can’t see them going any another way than the skip when I cark it

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

In 2000 I was living in Brierley Hill but fed up with my job. After taking some careers advice I decided to return to university to do a Masters course. I got accommodation on campus for the duration so I put the contents of my rented house into storage in the expectation that in one year's time I would get a job (somewhere) and extricate my belongings.

A few months after finishing my course, and still figuring out what my next career move would be, completely out of the blue I got the opportunity to move to the US.

Yep......almost 25 years later, all my stuff is still in storage in the midlands

25 years…I think we have a winner!

 

[HalfaSeatOn]

Depends what you hoard. I hate looking at today’s value of long gone vinyl records.

 

[Brovion]

Interesting thread. My wife is a hoarder, our house is quite untidy; every shelf is full and there isn't a single room that doesn't have at least one pile of her 'stuff' in the corners. The loft is packed, and trying to keep surfaces and tables clear is a constant battle.

Periodically I persuade her to part with some really old/duplicate things, and then a week or so later she'll find an excuse why she 'really needed it' and say that's why she never gets rid of things. And also periodically ... she's right. Despite my harrumphing she hung onto all our son's clothes and toys and was able to reuse the vast majority when our grandson came along. Plus he enjoys watching a lot of the old VHS tapes we have (yes we still have a video player).

Now her dad is 93 and currently lives alone in the family house - which is also packed full of stuff. At some time in the not-too-distant future we will have the problem of clearing his house. I know 100% that my wife will want to keep every single thing, and if we move it all into our house we won't be able to move. I've been looking at storage, just for our surplus stuff initially, and jeez, it's expensive.

So I'm not sure what the answer is.

 

[Wozza]

In 2000 I was living in Brierley Hill but fed up with my job. After taking some careers advice I decided to return to university to do a Masters course. I got accommodation on campus for the duration so I put the contents of my rented house into storage in the expectation that in one year's time I would get a job (somewhere) and extricate my belongings.

A few months after finishing my course, and still figuring out what my next career move would be, completely out of the blue I got the opportunity to move to the US.

Yep......almost 25 years later, all my stuff is still in storage in the midlands

Ok, you win (lose).

 

[TWOCHOICEStom]

I find a skip is more useful.

I have a skip in my front garden now and it brings a joy I've not really experienced before. The feeling of just lobbing stuff I don't want out of my bedroom window and for it never to be seen again WITHOUT having to go to the tip? Corrrr.

We got it to clear out the garage of the previous owners shite they left, but yesterday for example..... manky old toilet roll holder? In it goes. Fibre optic Christmas tree we thought was nice in 2010? See ya. 25 candles the wife has collected over the past 15 years? Get gone.

I feel so alive.

 

[jackanada]

My missus comes from a line of hoarders and has clearly not shed the family tradition.
I find myself in the unusual position of having the attic, the shed and bits of the house stuffed with crap I'll happily dump while there's valuable stuff that justifies it's existence costing me a fortune in storage.

And no it's not just her crap Vs my crap but as I know that's how she'll frame it I'll just have to put up with it.

While we're here why tips on how to explain to someone that a 'valuable antique dressing table' a granny gave them was always a rather shoddy piece of furniture that in its current condition would be rejected by even the shonkiest shop if you tried to give it to them?

 

[Wozza]

I've been wrestling with whether I'm a hoarder in the truest sense - keeping junk/unnecessary things.

When I posted last night, I was clearing out tax returns and post-grad uni work from around 2006/07. Eek!

That's not good BUT I reckon they went into storage in 2012, hidden among more meaningful items.

I have no problem with binning the docs now.

Simply, I should have been better at 'editing' over the years. But that's the problem with remote storage - out of sight, out of mind.

Other stuff? Well, my CDs should probably go - but are apparently coming back into fashion. lol

I gave away most of my vinyl collection 20 years ago, with no regrets. (I retained 50 or so cherished records)

I have quite a few magazines, but mostly ones I worked on (sentimental value) or first editions (collectible; coming to eBay soon).

I keep the boxes for every camera and lens I buy which looks like hoarding, buy significiantly increases resale value and makes things easier to ship. Reasonable, I think. (Ok, having many cameras and many, many lenses isn't normal)

My wife wants us to keep several boxes of baby/kid stuff, some of which I'd happily axe. Not my fault.

Football shirts? Collectible. Increasing in value. Staying.

Non-fiction books is probably the biggest issue. Some are definitely easier to dump when you haven't seen them for 12+ years.

So, a skip for all this stuff? No.

EDIT: I am now obsessed with Really Useful storage boxes, which IS weird.

 

[MJsGhost]

In 2000 I was living in Brierley Hill but fed up with my job. After taking some careers advice I decided to return to university to do a Masters course. I got accommodation on campus for the duration so I put the contents of my rented house into storage in the expectation that in one year's time I would get a job (somewhere) and extricate my belongings.

A few months after finishing my course, and still figuring out what my next career move would be, completely out of the blue I got the opportunity to move to the US.

Yep......almost 25 years later, all my stuff is still in storage in the midlands

What a wondeful trip down memory lane when (/if) you finally get back in amongst it - probably before you consign most of It to the the tip or freecycle.

Coincidentally, I visited my parents yesterday and my mum has been sorting out old photos. It was very rare that they ever put albums together, so it was mostly just loose photos, but the memories came flooding back even with the mundane photos that probably wouldn't be kept by most people.

The modern version of this kind of waste is cloud storage for photos. I dread to think how many utterly crap photos and videos are sat on a server somewhere, slowly baking the planet, but will never be viewed again. It's just too easy to neglect to cull phone photos as you go, so it very soon becomes too huge a task to tackle (I freely admit that this is me).

 

[Commander]

If it’s out of sight for 10 years you don’t needs it unless it’s of some value that you can sell .

3 months for me.

Although it's a pain in the arse when summer / winter comes around and you realise why the stuff you hadn't used for 3 months that is now in the bin wasn't used for 3 months.

 

[Official Old Man]

When we moved house 20 years ago we agreed NOT to put anything in the loft, mainly because what we took out of the old loft was dumped anyway.
We now have a double garage stuffed full. I gave away half a garage of disco gear (all old stuff CD players etc) and within a month the space was full again.
I'm a hoarder and keep everything.

 

[alanfp]

I gave away half a garage of disco gear (all old stuff CD players etc)

CD players = old stuff