I have a bit of a confession. I come from a long line of pack rats. Getting rid of my old stuff is a chore, and I'm a sucker for anything and everything free. I've gotten a little better about letting stuff go, but there's always a bit of protest before the stuff goes. The garage is barely usable for anything except storage, and I admit that most of the junk is mine.
My wife and I have been contemplating the purchase of a storage shed to go in our back yard — mainly for my stuff. We haven't gotten the shed yet, but the “junk tolerance” of my wife is being tested, so some action isn't far off.
Tom Vanderbilt's article on Slate.com, posted Monday, entitled “Self-storage Nation,” speaks to the booming business of self-storage. Starting from humble beginnings with the first facility in Texas in the late 1960s, there are now almost 40,000 self-storage facilities with a combined controlled storage area of over 46,000 acres! (I recall a Steven Wright quip: “If you could have everything, where would you put it?” Well, 46,000 acres would be a really good start!)
One big driving force behind this increase, is people like me — people who have just too much stuff to fit it all in their house. Wholesalers and people in the middle of a move contribute some, but it's just mainly a lot of people's junk that they don't have room for anymore that's contained in these self-storage megaplexes.
Herein lies a hidden cost of having a lot of stuff — you have to pay to store it! It either takes up space in your house, effectively decreasing your living area, or you pay to store it outside your house — either by buying extra storage or by renting it — if you have too much. And stuff takes up the same amount of space regardless of whether you bought it retail or bought it at auction or picked it up free!
So, my “great deals” that I found at auctions or thrift shops or garage sales or whatever are costing me. Not monetarily yet, but certainly in quality of living. If I were renting a storage space for these deals, it would be just like I had bought the stuff on a credit card and didn't pay off the balance. The rented space is like an interest payment on your stuff.
That's not that great a deal. Maybe it's time to part with some of my belongings.
Sometimes renting or loaning out from friends seems like a good idea 🙂
Yep, if you're only going to need it once in a while (like a power washer) it may be a better idea to rent or borrow.
Auctions are sometimes great places to pick up equipment really cheaply. On the flip side, auctions are sometimes great places to pick up equipment really cheaply, and it's easy to rationalize "One use and it will pay for itself" and it takes up valuable real estate in your garage, probably until your heirs sell it at your estate auction. 🙂
I got a floor sander for a friend for $2. It certainly would pay for itself if he ever needed to use it (he has some rental houses and does fixer-uppers) since they rent for $40/day. But in the meantime it's taking up a bit of space in his garage.