Way too many of us spend tens of thousands of dollars storing what is essentially junk.

I know people who have maintained storage units for decades, and they really don't even know what's in there! They have vague ideas about selling "collectibles" or that old Apple computer that might be worth something. They've spent much, much more than anything they'd get in return, even if they did succeed in selling it.

I knew someone who spent thousands a year to store cardboard moving boxes!

It's a form of hoarding.

I really need to do something.

And happy new year.

I did it myself for a while.

There's one in Omaha that has Bible Verses all over the place, lots of them talking about the evil of money blah blah blah and THEN they raise your rates to the moon. I know because the place I work for had enough and moved their stuff to a different storage place.

All of this said, I think some people just need to throw old crap out and cancel their rental agreement. It creates too much demand and these pirates can charge whatever they want. I sympathize with the person in the story though.

We'd moved from a rural area to the city & had some outside stuff like fencing & animal cages that we stored. Over the next few years more & more stuff ended up there, mostly stuff I never used but wouldn't get rid of. One day a friend discovered I had a storage unit & she laughed & laughed & said, "You'll die with that thing." I was determined right then that I wouldn't. The following summer I got rid of it, most of the stuff going to thrift shops or the trash, but the animal rescue place I gave the fencing & cages to was so grateful! And not paying $125 a month to store shit I never used was even better! As I was emptying the unit I met a man who had three storage units. Wow.

The guy with 3 units is just hoarding.

You saved $1,500 a year. Probably more, as the rent would have increased.

years ago.... got sick of them pumping price. The very last time was when I told 'em "f^ck it, you can have everything in there. Auction it all, whatever, I don't give a sh^t. I'm tired of the gouging."
They said "we'll give a month at the last lower rate if you want to move out" By that time I fully understood that this "stuff" weighing me down mostly just had sentimental value, and that was only when I actually set eyes on it, maybe twice a year. I ended up keeping some tools, a few books... the rest went to Good Will, some animal helpers, etc
Then, what I did convinced a family member to do the same.
The storage people just piggy-backed on me scamming myself

Storage units have use, don't get me wrong. but my experience is: get rid of junk

These units can cost a lot more if you're near a city. I know a couple who was paying $350 a month for a storage unti after they lost their home and had to move all of their stuff into storage.

Yet another industry preying on the people in society who are already going through tough times. A lot of people are oblivious to the fact that when you're poor or going through tough times, everything is more expensive and everything can be scam. Cars, insurance, phones, food, housing, storage, driving and parking, even utlities all tend to cost more for the poor and many of them have scams involved with them. And it all gets worse with Republicans in charge.

I've told this story several times on DU, but it's worth retelling. My wife and I had a good freind who was hard working, but had a disabled daughter at home who needed constant surgeries. Let's call her Ann. So her car was absoluitely vital for her to care for her child and to get to work. So when her car broke down and the mechanic said it's not worth fixing for $3500 it was disasterous. She was in a near panic and didn't know what to do so she went to one of those corporate "Car City" type places. What they put her through was cruel. It took several hours for them to brek her down, it was all part of a routine they had honed to perfection. They'd tell her "Good news, we think you qualify, you're leaving with a car tonight." Then they'd take her paperwork to some other department and come tell her, "Sorry, you just don't qualify for a loan, your credit is too bad..." They repeated this several times until she was sobbing. That's when the "manager" got involved, "Ann, I just feel awful for you, but there's this new program that just started I don't know a ton about, but I want to see if you qualify." It was psychological warfare, she spent hours being convinced that her credit was awful and her life was about to get much harder and they even guilted her about caring for her child. The end result was INSANE!!!!!! I still cannot believe it when I type this out. So after all of that, and being totally spent, she left with a car alright. A 10 year old Ford Focus with 95,000 miles on it. And the loan? Nope, not a loan, but a 4 year lease. with absurd terms. $325 a month payment, but you were required to insure through them so it was actually $475 a month after that. Oil changes could only be done through their own service center, these were $75 each. Any repair had to go through their service center and the repairs that did happen she ended up paying double of what a normal garage would have charged her. Termination fees of thousands of dollars should she want out, air tight after she had our lawyer friend look at it.

And of course, the dreaded "kill switch" was installed on her car. If she was late on a payment, they could disable her car from starting. This happened at the grocery store with her daughter, they came out to their car in the heat with a cart full of groceries and her car wouldn’t start. It was a 4 year nightmare that there was no way out of. And the worst part, after she told us of the deal she "got" I went to Credit Karma and ran her credit there, hercredit was fine, she could have gotten a normal low interest loan with no money down at almost any reputable dealership, they flat out lied to her about her credit. Car barely ran, was worth maybe a few grad total, and she was paying $450 to $500 a month to use it.

There is a cottage industry in this country around preying on poor people. And the election of Trump just guranteed this will accelerate. Payday loans, fake online universities, trailer parks with ridiculous terms and fees, etc etc, it's all going to get much much harder for the poor.