Oh, man. I am such an idiot. We went to the storage place today to store some nice baby stuff (crib, toys, potty training thing, etc.) given to us by our (my husband’s) sister-in-law. Except (this part wasn’t my fault) my husband lost the keys to the lock, so we went planning to break the lock with a hammer and a screwdriver (great plan, I know, but it was a cheap lock. Stuff like that always works on TV…) So after a couple of blows we decide to go buy a bolt-cutter. Here is where I become a complete idiot: it is hot, I am pregnant, and I don’t feel like being left alone to watch the stuff. I also don’t feel like going by myself to get the bolt cutters. (My husband would have let me do either one.) So I convince him that we will leave the stuff in the hallway and come right back and no one will take it. We don’t tell the storage lady (of whom I’m sort of scared because she’s sort of abrupt and stuff - OK I’m not scared of her but it never occurred to me to tell her actually) I reasoned that the stuff itself except the crib is not THAT valuable, and who would take it? Well it took longer than we thought (no bolt cutters at the first place; boss called and I had forgotten to send a doc last night, I had to go home and send it) and when we got back…amazing surprise, no stuff. I went to the rental office and ask if she knew anything about some stuff left in one of the interior hallways. “What stuff?” she says sternly. “Baby stuff,” I say. Her daughter, who is in the office with her, looks immediately horrified and clamps her hand on her mouth. She says, “Why didn’t you tell me!!!” and admits that someone who was with a customer asked about it and she figured it was abandoned goods and told them they could have it. I burst into tears. She became more helpful. She took my number and said she would get in touch with the people. She just called me back and said the lady is going to bring the stuff back tomorrow. I sure hope we see it again. The main reason is that – and yes, I just remembered this now – the sister-in-law wants the stuff back after we’re done so she can donate it. Which is fine, but that means it was never really our stuff, which I seriously forgot, and maybe I wouldn’t have been so cavalier about stuff that didn’t really belong to us…oh man. Here’s hoping the lady brings the stuff back tomorrow…argh…
Are you pregnant?
Well we all learned a good lesson here today. Thankfully, the lesson isn’t “people suck and will steal your stuff if your stuff is alone for a few minutes,” it’s “when you clean out your storage space and don’t want some of your stuff, leave it out in the hallway because that’s where ‘abandoned stuff’ goes.” 
Yep.
Very true – and that could really come in handy at some point.
I thought the lesson was: “long strings of sentences without paragraph breaks are difficult to read.” 
I lost all my kids baby stuff because of their dad. When I left him I had a great deal of stuff in the attic of the house. When I left our son was three and our daughter 11 months so there was a lot of new born girl baby items as well as baby boy clothes and toddler stuff. Any one that has a baby knows that most of the clothing is grown out way before it is worn out. I think I had some of the little girl dresses still had tags on them. She grew to quick to use them.
Were he lives you have to pay for trash pick up but one weekand a year the city will pick up anything you put out for free. He decided he needed more room for his comic books so he threw everything on the curb. He never called me or asked if I wanted anything. By the time I found it had been gone for over a year.
The only reason I even asked for it was there was a girl I worked with who was pregnant and I was going to give most of it to her sans some special items that I got from family members and some others that I just wanted to keep. She could have really used it too.
I was very upset about it. The only thing that made me feel even a tad better is he said that a old man and his pregnant daughter knocked to make sure the items were really for the trash pick up. He said they took it all and were very excited. At least it went to someone that could really use it. You can not be any more desperate than searching for baby items in the trash.
I would be more concerned that it’s so easy at that storage facility to try and break upon a lock with a hammer and screwdriver, and then use a bolt cutter, without anyone noticing. I am assuming from your O.P. that you didn’t tell the employees ahead of time that you were trying to break into a storage unit.
No, we did tell her ahead of time. She was not impressed with our method, gee I wonder why, and told us if we damaged the door we’d have to pay for it. Which makes sense. We just didn’t tell her that in the middle of the attempt we were switching to bolt cutters and leaving stuff in the hallway.
Well, we got really lucky and the lady brought all the stuff back. Was I ever glad to see it. We are not going to tell the husband’s brother and sister-in-law (whose stuff it was and who wanted it back when we were done with it so they could donate it) for as long as we live. Whew, I am going to really try to be more careful in the future.
I’m more surprised that the owner of the units didn’t have a pair of bolt cutters. I’d think they’d need to use them to cut the locks off units that were too far behind on payment.
Hope you get the stuff back! Good thing the owner’s daughter was willing to work with you to get ahold of the people who “borrowed” your stuff.