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Midlife Clutter: 3 Reasons It’s Time to Ditch the Storage Unit

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Ditch Your Storage Unit

If you are in midlife and paying rent on a storage unit you’ll definitely want to read this all the way through. I’m going to attempt to persuade you to ditch it! Don’t get me wrong, there are some really good reasons to have a storage unit. However, in my experience what starts out as a temporary situation extends for years, then decades, and finally, painfully, ends upon the event of your death.

Mostly, we enter into contract on a storage unit for valid reasons:

  • A relative passes away and you have neither time nor energy to properly deal with their belongings
  • There isn’t room in your current home for certain pieces of furniture that you would like to use in a future, larger space
  • Your current home is short on storage for things you only use seasonally, like large sprts equipment or holiday decorations

But then time goes by and some combination of the following scenarios happens:

  1. The stuff in the storage unit moves into ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’ territory. And because it’s a big job to deal with, we avoid it.
  2. A temporary living situation becomes permanent, with no acknowledgement that the storage unit is housing a bunch of stuff that we will never use.
  3. As we continue to acquire more things, we offload what won’t fit and relegate it to the storage unit

If any of this feels familiar I’ve hopefully secured your attention. It’s time to divest of your storage unit. The reasons are many, but here are the 3 most compelling for your consideration.

It’s Costing You money

Your storage unit is costing you money

This is the most compelling reason to ditch your storage unit. It is a drain on your resources. Even if you have plenty of resources to waste – there are so many better ways to use that money. One idea, hire a professional organizer to help you declutter and clear it out. Investing x months of storage payments to finally rid yourself of the storage unit will save you years of rent down the road. Plus, a professional will make the job less overwhelming and painful.

What if there is some stuff in there you’d actually like to keep? You can do some decluttering at home to make space for the things that matter. But the stuff you are keeping out of obligation or guilt? The things you are never going to use? It makes zero sense to pay money to store it.

It’s Future Work For Your Kids

Your kids don't want your stuff

If you do nothing about that storage unit, someday someone is going to have to deal with it. If you have children, this fun job will likely fall to them. Is that what you want?

Many people learn this lesson when their own parents pass away and they are tasked with disposing of decades of belongings. When you are dealing with grief it makes that job twice as difficult. Layer a storage unit on top of the primary residence and now it’s 10x the effort and energy..

Better for you to handle the job now, while you have energy and strength. If there are things in the storage unit you have been saving for your children, get their input on whether they really want them. If they aren’t interested, don’t take it personally – it’s usually a generational thing. They will love and appreciate you more for not saddling them with the burden of decluttering the storage unit when your time comes.

It’s A Silent Weight On Your Mind

Storage units weigh on your mind

Technically, I’m classifying the stuff in your storage unit as clutter because you don’t use it. I referred to storage units as out of sight, out of mind earlier in this post, but you know better, right?

We know from multiple studies that clutter negatively impacts mental health. Storage unit clutter is the most insidious kind. Even though you forget about it for long stretches, it subconsciously haunts the back of your mind. Surface clutter in your home can be a problem, but your proximity to the clutter makes it less of a pain to deal with. The storage unit is worse because it lurks in your psyche as an overwhelming project that feels bigger every time you put it off.

Even if you access your storage unit on occasion, it’s a pain to use! It’s a dreary errand that you most certainly do not look forward to, and that is a weight on your psyche as well.

What To Do About It?

Working on a laptop

Let’s face it, you probably already knew all the reasons why it’s a good idea to ditch your storage unit. What’s stopping you is the size of the project. There are a couple of approaches that will help you kill the overwhelm and follow through.

The first one is to break the project down into smaller parts. For instance:

Step 1: Visit Storage Unit and take inventory

Step 2: Record the actions that you’ll need to take in list form: (soliciting feedback from kids, making decisions about what stays and what goes, plan for donations, plan for transportation, declutter to make space in your home, etc.)

Step 3: Take only one or two actions at a time until you complete the list

The second approach I already mentioned earlier: get the help of a Professional Organizer. An objective third party can support you with decision-making, provide structure and accountability and help things move quickly. It’s absolutely worth the money.

Whatever your approach, the feeling of lightness you experience when that storage unit is off of your books and your psyche is amazing. If you’d like to hear more from me on this subject, I talk about it at length on Glennda’s Guru podcast.

You can do this – I’m cheering you on!

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One Comment

  1. Main Concerns of our storage unit:
    1. We kept the best of the best of their toys thinking they could be passed on to their kids; they don’t have kids…yet…and they don’t have homes yet so storage area is a problem for them; we feel “stuck!”
    2. We have a lot of framed and unframed artwork that by donating will not be appreciated and I fear will “just be tossed aside in the garbage!”
    3. My husband has drums that need to be sold but it’s a rough market right now and they are worth money. We do try to sell via eBay, etc. It’s not happening fast enough and leaves us feeling so overwhelmed!
    Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you🤟🏽

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