Emptying a storage unit for good
The guide to moving into storage between homes covers the unit that was always going to be emptied: the closing gap, the renovation, the retrieval that was planned from the day it was loaded. This is about the other kind. The unit that outlived its reason, that has been quietly charging a card every month, and that has to be emptied because the rent went up, the facility is closing, a parent has died, or someone finally added up what it has cost.
The temptation is to treat it as a move: hire a truck, load everything, bring it home, sort it later. That is the most expensive way to do it, because it pays to move a unit's worth of things that mostly will not be kept, and then pays again to get rid of them from a garage. The cheaper way is to sort in the unit and move only what survives the sort.
First, find out what is actually in there
Go to the unit before you book anything, with a flashlight, a notebook and a free afternoon, and walk it. Most people find that a third of what they pay to store is furniture they have replaced, a third is boxes never opened since they were loaded, and the rest is the reason the unit exists: a piano, a parent's house, the things from a marriage that ended.
Write down the large pieces, count the boxes, and open a few of the boxes at random. That is the inventory the rest of the plan is built on, and it is also the inventory a mover or a junk removal crew needs to give you a straight answer about the job.
Check the facility's terms while you are there. Most require written notice before the unit is vacated, some prorate the last month and some do not, and all of them require the unit to be swept and the lock removed before the account is closed. The notice period is the date the plan works back from.
Sort in the unit, not at home
Sorting in a storage corridor is unpleasant, and it is still the right place to do it, because everything that leaves the unit unsorted has to be handled twice. Work with four zones on the ground outside the door: coming home, being sold or given away, being donated, and going. Bring boxes, tape, markers and something to sit on.
The rule that makes it go quickly is that anything you have not needed in the years it has been stored, you do not need. Exceptions exist, and they are the documents, the photographs, the things with a name attached, and the pieces worth real money. Everything else has already proved it is not missed.
Storage does things to belongings, and the sort is where that shows. Upholstery that spent three summers in an unconditioned unit may smell of it. Cardboard that sat on a concrete floor has wicked moisture from the bottom. Anything electronic has been through several freeze and thaw cycles. Be honest about what has survived and what would be replaced anyway.
- Home: documents, photographs, the pieces with a name on them, and anything you have missed
- Sell or give away: furniture in good condition, tools, sports equipment, anything with a market
- Donate: what a charity will take, which is less than people assume, and never anything stained, torn or damp
- Go: everything else, in one removal rather than a month of trips
The pieces that need a plan of their own
Most units hide one or two items that cannot be dealt with on the day of the sort. A piano, a safe, a large appliance, a full set of dining furniture that is going to a family member two hours away. Each of those is either a specialty move, a single-item delivery or a scheduled disposal, and each needs booking separately with the item, its size and the access at the unit described honestly.
Access is the thing to describe. A ground-floor drive-up unit is easy. An interior unit on the third floor of a converted warehouse, reached by one freight elevator with a booking sheet and a corridor with a turn in it, is a different job for a piano, and the estimate depends on knowing which one it is. Send photographs of the corridor and the doors, not just the unit.
The day it empties
Book the removal and the move for the same day if you can, with the removal crew arriving second. The keep pile goes on the moving truck first, then the corridor and the unit are clear for the removal, and nothing from the go pile ends up on the wrong vehicle. If the piles were sorted a week earlier, mark them clearly, because a week is long enough for a box to migrate.
Before the last vehicle leaves, sweep the unit, remove the lock, photograph the empty space with the unit number visible, and hand in whatever the office requires. Then close the account in writing and check the card the next month. A unit that is empty and still billing is a common story, and the photograph is what ends it.
Deciding whether to keep the unit at all
Sometimes the sort reveals that the unit is doing a real job: a household between homes, a business's records, a collection with nowhere else to live. Then the question is whether it is the right unit. A half-empty unit after a sort can usually move to a smaller one at the same facility, and moving between units is a short job that pays for itself within a few months of the lower rent.
The test is simple. If the monthly rent for a year would buy what is inside, the unit is not storing anything. It is renting a room for things nobody wants to decide about, and this is the deciding.