Three lessons, painfully learned…

Lesson One: Storage units are evil. Okay, sometimes they’re a necessary evil, but once they slip past that necessity mark and slither into an ignorable “convenience,” they sink into an ever deepening bog of recrimination and regret. And then you have to block out all math-knowledge to avoid figuring out how much you’ve spent keeping things you didn’t really want in the first place.

That first day — the day the storage unit stuff arrived — was not good. Rather than opening a time-capsule it was more like excavating a dried up, old chrysalis shell — something long outgrown I had no interest in reexamining. I wished I’d just told the storage unit company to get rid of everything and washed my hands of it all.

The second day was a bit better. I went through boxes and boxes (and boxes!) of books and found a cherished few (you know — for me) I wanted to keep. I also found a treasure trove of photographs and letters. The third and fourth days, with both my sisters there to help, we went through everything else. I found more photographs, more letters, and a few (a very few) knick-knacks that held some precious memories.

My sisters were thrilled with the furniture and such they took. I was pleased I’d whittled down an overflowing storage unit to three, normal-sized, boxes. By the time we were done I wasn’t angry at myself anymore and I was glad I hadn’t thrown everything away, sight unseen. But that first lesson still sticks with me. I don’t think I’ll ever do a storage unit again.

Lesson Two: Don’t just take something because someone’s giving it to you for free. Do you honestly need it? Do you honestly like it? If the answer to either question is unsure hesitation… don’t do it! Let it go to someone actually thrilled to have it. (So many boxes contained things I’d taken only because it was free and I might need it. Someday. Maybe. Something else I’ll never do again.)

Lesson Three: I am more pumped than ever to follow Marie Kondo’s method and go through every single item in my house. If the beginning exercise she set was an inspirational motivation, this experience I put myself through was a negative one. I want to be more streamlined, to know exactly what I have and why I have it. I don’t ever want to unpack a box, pull something out and think, “Why in the hell did I keep this?”