My first storage unit came during my college years. When I moved from my own apartment into a shared abode with the boyfriend of the time, not all of my furniture could make the move and still leave room for his. And so it began. The storage saga. In the fifteen or so years since the unit was first rented, the contents held in storage have varied widely.
For the first few years after college I moved often. First to a small apartment, then to a small house, and finally to a spacious 3-bedroom house with a converted garage. As I increased my living space with each move, my need for a storage unit decreased -- but it also coincided with the time of my brother's greatest need. He and his then wife were also moving frequently, small children in tow. The virtually empty unit began to fill again.
In time, I took a second job in Nashville. After a couple years of spending 4 hours of every day driving to and from work, I moved from the large house to a smaller duplex near the interstate and my things began to return to storage. This time joining whatever my brother had left behind.
Through a rushed move in the midst of 90-hour work week (coupled with a 24-hour per week commute), I watched as the storage unit began to take on a sinister disorganization which only got worse a year later when I traded in that small duplex near the interstate for an apartment in Nashville by way of another rushed move.
Though I'd finally killed the commute, my storage unit had become rather full and terribly messy. Furniture bought for the changing needs of each home -- a guest room here, a converted garage there -- now filled my storage. But on top, underneath, and beside that furniture, piles of miscellany had spread kudzu-like through the unit, tendrils everywhere. A box of knick-knacks sat on a fridge; Christmas decorations covered an oven; toys from my youth were heaped on a dining table; school books and notebooks lurked underneath.
When the time came to leave Tennessee entirely, there was no question that a second unit would be needed to store the contents of a working home: couches and chairs, beds and nightstands, bookshelves and books, desks and computers, dishes and pans. That second unit, not filled hurriedly, is blessedly organized. But the first...
Well, I've spent a month here converting THIS:
to THIS:
It may not be done yet, but it's getting there!
Finally.
