Room without a View

What is YOUR self-storage rental unit telling you? We all need an additional, externally located deluxe closet for your high school mementos or an expensive option to finally be able to park your vehicle in that place called a two-car garage?

No. No silly wabbits, storage is for kids. This over sized drive thru coffin with air is telling you that if you haven't used or open a few cardboard boxes in this millennium then life is blatantly screaming you don't need to spend $99.99 a month to keep your child's first sippy cup in air conditioned, carpeted, temperature controlled filing cabinets next to your USED college textbooks that YOU STILL haven't opened. (Remember that one C- you got sophomore year in Women's Studies?)

The only thing overtaking the country's landscape in both urban and suburbia more than these shoe boxes with padlocks are Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks. But at least they offer coffee that you never store more than 24 hours or until the next rest stop.

These (UStore it, StopnStore, Lackland, Pods, PackRat) self storage business cases were based on the fact that most Americans think of the number of possessions as their wealth, instead of the quality of their health.

I'm a sentimental, collectible, archivist as well. But I do try consolidating my memories into a 4 x 4 ft. area of my basement for photos, family heirlooms and ...um...magazines.

Yeah, laugh now, but you never know when that article from a 1989 woodworking magazine will come in handy as I finally build that amazing tree house that will use up all that lumber and rope sitting in my basement behind the furnace.

Solution of the day: Use your digital camera to photograph all the stuff you think you want to keep. After showing it to your family and friends and hearing them laugh at your 6th grade choir recital program photo or your collectible shot glasses from New Mexico...I think you will find it much easier to use that recycling bin now that you placed your poorly recorded VHS tapes of Luke and Laura's wedding on General Hospital for sale on eBay.