(Inspired by another thread about "stuff) What the title asks - do you pay for a storage unit outside of your living unit where you store things?
If yes:
-what do you keep in it?
-how large is it?
-how much does it cost?
-do you anticipate ever getting rid of it?
I found a storage unit to be a money pit, unless you are moving.
My wife, who used to be an elementary school teacher, rented a storage unit during some summers. Typically it would be a summer where she’d be moving into a different classroom in the fall, so she needed somewhere to store her stuff during the move.
Not at this time, but we staged furniture into two small units in the lead-up to a move and to hold some stuff between houses. It wasn’t very expensive and was useful. If I were going to move now, I’d use a unit at a U-Haul place on one end or the other. I’d also use one if I had a relative who died or moved to a care facility in order to prioritize moving their stuff out over having to sort everything too quickly.
Oh, and my answer in no.
At one point, during a complicated move, we stored some stuff in our daughter’s garage briefly.
My niece was an elementary teacher and did similar to @suranyi’s wife over several summers. It’s remarkable the amount of personal crap teachers bring into the classroom to do their job.
I moved out on my soon-to-be-ex 5 months ago and rented a storage unit for the vast majority of my meager belongings while I lived in what amounted to a hotel. My storage unit was 8 x 10 indoors with good HVAC for $225/mo in an expensive area. 4 months later = 1 month ago I moved into my new permanent residence and closed out the storage unit. I could not have come close to replacing the stuff in there for what I paid to store it for that time; storage was economically advantageous vs pitch-and-replace.
IMO that’s using them right.
OTOH, in decades past I have downsized where we ended up putting a bunch of stuff in storage expecting to cull and organize and sell and it just turned into out of sight, out of mind, and out of pocket. Or worse yet, pay once to move excess crap to a new place where it won’t fit, then pay again to store it, and finally 3 years later admit it’s crap and dumpsterize it all.
Often people get storage units to solve a problem that’s actually permanent, but the unit helps them maintain the emotional fiction that the problem is temporary.
E.g. lose the house because they can’t afford it, downsize to a small apartment, then store the formal dining room set they’d bought for the house. “Soon we’ll be back in a house, if not that house.” Yeah sure. 4 years later their $2K dining room set has had an extra $3K invested in its storage costs and now it’s outdated and moldy. And you’re still in the apartment because you’re not doing anything that’ll increase your wages and the price of houses is only going up.
So yeah, a moneypit trap.
2, both for my late (hoarder) mother’s crap, 1 in each state, which my sister at least thinks we can get sell, but so far they are small but significant money pits for us, and we may have to liquidate both by the end of the year.
I voted no since I get a storage unit with my condo (which I did pay for but I assume the OP means a rental).
I think it is 4’x4’x6’.
Old paint, some family heirlooms (of value only to me). Spare dining room chairs (disassembled). A few boxes of books. Misc.
No, but we did have one for a little while, as mentioned, after my father died, as a place to temporarily store/sort thru things, as we needed to get out of his senior apartment. Once the dining set was sold on craigslist we closed the place out.
A friend of mine had a garage full of crap. Lots of stuff they were “saving for the kids”, like dishware, kitchen gadgets, furniture, etc. and other sundry crap. The garage was packed, except for a small path around the perimeter of the pile. When his in-laws passed away he and his wife kept a lot of their stuff, supposedly to sort thru, and since their garage was full, enter a storage unit. When his father passed away and his mom went into assisted living, they had a full house of stuff to sort thru, so they got another unit. This all occurred over about 4-5 years, about 4-5 years ago. Then, last fall, they got a nice, new car, and wanted to park it in his garage - so they cleared-out the pile in there to make room for the car. Where did all the crap go? Another storage locker! And BTW, their kids moved-out and wanted none of the stuff that was saved for them.
I have gently nudged him to get rid of most of that crap but he’s attached to a lot of it - very sentimental guy. I tried showing him the cost of keeping all that stuff, compared to the actual value of it - not getting thru so much.
User to. Then I bought a 20’ storage container to keep out in the yard.
Three years ago my wife and I moved from a 3,600-square-foot (335-square-meter) house to her mother’s 1,500-sq-ft (140-sq-m) cottage whose cellar, attic, and garage were filled with the family’s detritus and keepsakes from the previous 60 years.
In preparation for the move we had donated, discarded, or sold beds, sofas, tables, chairs, housewares, and at least half of our library of 2,200 books (by actual count using LibraryThing).
Despite this drastic paring down, there was no room in the smaller house for large quantities of our stuff, mostly books, papers, photos, artwork, and other odds and ends. We had no choice but to rent two small storage spaces about 30 minutes away, where the rates were cheaper.
Since then I have labored mightily to clear out and organize the garage, cellar, and attic, with some success. The biggest accomplishment was completely clearing out the attic so that it could be insulated and a new floor put down, replacing the loose boards that had simply been placed on top of the joists.
Then, earlier this year, I hired a truck and a crew of laborers to move all the stuff out of the remaining storage space and up into the attic. We also moved some of the boxes that had been in the garage and the cellar up there at the same time. This enabled us to give up the storage space and the $75/month charge.
This (note the loose boards on left side of left picture):
(Click on image to see both full size.)
Became this:
I don’t see any insulation, and without insulation that attic can get very hot–and lots of stuff doesn’t do well in that much heat.
Several categories of items:
Basically it’s my attic/basement/shed.
10x10x10
I am hoping to down size sufficiently this year to opt for a smaller 5x10x10 unit. Not quite there yet.
I live in an 800 square apartment and have too many hobbies. Also, being able to rotate in/out seasonal items gives me more space to actually live in.
I do anticipate being able to move to a unit half the size of the one I currently have.
I don’t rent a storage unit, though I did 35 years ago when I had some basement work done. Rented for 2 months.
But I do know a horder with at least four units. What does he have in them? VCRs and DVD players. He’s convinced he’s sitting on a fortune. 
I built my own ten years ago: 40’ X 40’ pole barn in the back yard. 
Even has an attic.
Now it’s so full of stuff that I have to build another. 
I did for years. When I was getting a divorce I didn’t have any room for my stuff. Left the stuff in there when I had a girlfriend and lived with her. I was about to get rid of it when I bought this place. The albatross around my neck was a not very good pool table. I was able to sell that then I found room for everything else.
This is my friend as well. You ask him about the vinyl he has and he says it is valuable. About the water ski sitting there that hasn’t touched water in decades and he says it was top notch “back in the day”. The magazines from the 80s may be collector’s items. There is always some reason for holding on to this stuff, usually having to do with “value”, but things are only as valuable as others may be willing to pay for them.
Not anymore, but I did use one for a very long time storing most of my furniture when I had a very rough downturn in my life and had to downgrade my living arrangements. It was meant to be six months or so, and ended up being nearly ten years.
Anyway, all good now, and all my stuff is in my home again.
Had a small storage unit for about 6 months, to house some of my daughter’s stuff while they were relocating. It was worth every penny, as it gave me back my half of our garage.
We have two. We keep saying we could combine into one. But that sounds like a lot of work. Mostly they contain furniture that we think our kids will want some day. But you could buy a lot of furniture for what we’ve paid over the last three years.
