There
are storage facilities everywhere and I’ve always wondered why there’s such a
big demand for them. Are there really
that many people with homeless possessions?
Isn’t it just a way to pay rent without actually using your things? Doesn’t that mean that you don’t really need those things?
Storage facilities were a mystery to me because I’ve never needed one. But based on the
prevalence of them, I assumed I was one of the few people who don’t.
Well,
mystery solved. Almost. I still don’t know how so many of them end up
abandoned and on A&E’s Storage Wars,
where odd people come in and bid on the units at auction with only a glimpse and a
guess from the outside. (I’ve never
actually watched Storage Wars, but I
have friends that watch it and have told me more than I ever cared to know about
it, so I’m semi-qualified to mention it in this blog. Clearly I’m also “semi-qualified” to choose
friends.)
But
at least now I know why a normal person would need to rent one of those. My brother, who is arguably the most normal
person in my family, invested in not one, but two storage units because he’s
moving. He put his house on the market
and it sold in the first week, sooner than expected, too soon to move into his
new home. This stroke of luck (who sells
their house after one showing these days?) left him with three months of
homelessness that he’s decided to wait out in an apartment. An apartment that can’t even come close to
holding all of their things.
So,
The Voice of Reason and I spent two sunny and muscle-testing days helping him
move, store, and arrange. And I got my
first experience with self-storage. It’s
a different game than Storage Wars,
where someone wants to get everything out of a unit. Our game was how to fit as much as possible
into one. Well, two.
It
reminded me of my true calling as a structural engineer. Because for a girl who has always loved to
pack a trunk like I’m assembling a puzzle, this was like the world
championships of that event. Standing
with one foot on the back of a sofa and the other atop a bookcase, I was able
to drop rolls of Christmas wrapping paper into a cylindrical slot between
workout equipment and a high chair, winning me the gold medal in acrobatics and mental acuity.
But
all the while, I was wondering why a guy who has never wrapped a Christmas
present in his life had so many rolls of Christmas paper. I used to earn extra Christmas presents from
him by wrapping all of his to other people.
I had one of
those he-doesn’t-need-me-anymore moments because I realized that his wife wraps
their Christmas presents now. But then
I figured out how to thread his weed eater between the two kayaks and it reminded both of us
that I’m still useful.
And
that’s good. Because if there’s one
place you don’t want to find out you’re expendable, it’s a storage
facility. Someone could knock you off
and toss your body into one of those units and it probably wouldn’t ever be
discovered. Unless those Storage Wars weirdos show up and bid on
the leather recliner and mahogany table they see from outside and then get
burned not only by too much wrapping paper, but also a dead person. Because who needs more of those?
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