If you’re like me, you have encountered a pile of old (sub your favorite “clothing” “books” “papers” “80s mementos”) and had the epiphany that the big grey bin you found at Home Depot would be the perfect solution to this disorder. All it needs is a label. Yay, mission accomplished!

Fast forward five, seven, ten, eighteen years. Big grey bin is beneath two boxes, has gathered a few cobwebs, the label is faded, and even if you can read it, you can’t remember what it is in there. And the thought of pulling it out from beneath those boxes, opening it, and sorting through the dozens of things inside that you know you don’t want is just too daunting. So you pretend it didn’t happen.

Now multiple that big grey bin situation by a lot. What do you have? A storage unit. I.e., a seemingly helpful tool for organizing and making space that, in reality, is a predatory force preying on us when we are most vulnerable.

That might be an exaggeration, but only a very slight one. Why are storage units four-letter words in my mind? 

ONE:
They get you when you’re down. Who rents storage units, and why? People who have accumulated more things than they can reasonably store in their homes, whether because they were talked into buying things they didn’t need, inherited things they don’t want or can’t use, and/or went through a major life event that made dealing with things too difficult. I.e., you were persuaded that the new couch was necessary and perfect, only to realize that you couldn’t quite afford it and now have no space for the furniture that was already there. When your parents died, you were in no shape to sort through their drawers, cabinets, closets, and boxes, so it went, mostly intact, right into this space. Your husband’s sister had to move in with her baby, pushing old kids’ clothes you had been meaning to sort and boxes of books you read in college into the storage unit. This might sound like help when you need it, until you consider that…

TWO:
They enable you to avoid healthy grieving and processing. Of course, you wouldn’t “grieve” the bad decision to buy the couch you didn’t really want, but by shoving the old one out of sight, you allow yourself to not confront the pattern and nip this forming habit in the bud. And while it’s natural not to be able to cope with sorting your parents’ clothing, needlepoints, sentimental but not-your-thing serving platters, and old love letters in the weeks and months after they passed, the storage unit has turned those into years in which you never fully processed and missed out on valuable opportunities to use and cherish the few items that do keep them alive for you (and that you really do want to pass on to your own kids). And you are building up resentment towards your sister-in-law because the monthly rent for that storage unit has gone up a ton, but you can’t tell her that. Leading to…

THREE:
They stealthily rack up bills that, cumulatively, would have enabled you to do so many other, better things. I read in another organizer’s blog post recently that her clients’ twenty-plus year storage unit, which was housing basically her parents’ entire apartment since they died, had cost them more over those two decades than they needed for a solid downpayment on a second vacation home. This is likely on the extreme end, but the practice storage units employ of giving you the first few months cheap, or even free, and then raising the rates over time, is no accident. Most of us would balk initially at the rate we pay a few years later without even noticing. And the convenient monthly or semi-annual automatic payments guarantee that we’ll overlook the bills we’re accruing and make them feel much smaller.

This is not to say that there’s no situation in which a storage unit is a good, or at least necessary, tool. But my strong advice to my clients is to treat it as such.

Know, going in, that it is a temporary resource. Lean on it in tough times – when you can’t and shouldn’t deal with sorting and processing – but don’t let that set of crutches become a cane or a wheelchair you don’t need. Your initial criteria for choosing a unit can help ensure these wiser, more cost-effective choices. Proximity is huge – if you can’t easily get to your unit, you’re a lot less likely to actually start the sorting process at the three-month mark you set for yourself. Take advantage of those initial first months’ for free offer. If you play this right, those are all you need. Then, when you have cleared that baby out (with my help, if needed) within the six-month trial period, take yourself out for a drink on the money you earned, and toast your stellar ability to make these rules work for you.