Something to consider when thinking about "storing your stuff"....

This is my recent experience that I wanted to share with the commmunity.........something to consider....

When I graduated OTA school I took a job 3 hours away from my hometown and moved out of my mothers home for the first time...So of course with a new job and a new apartment I needed NEW FURNITURE....YAY!!....Ok so I was there for 8 months, then moved north another hour...and stayed at that job for 8 months or so until my boyfriend and I decided we wanted to start traveling. We are both COTA's and we travel together. So I found a local Storage Facility in my home town (right down the road from my mom's house) ....that way when i came home to visit if we needed anything I could zip right down the road to get it. It's $90 a month and contains all that furniture that I bought....and a few random other things....but mostly the furniture. Yeah so now we are going on 3 years of traveling.....Which means....that I will have paid $3240.00 to store all of that furniture for 3 years!!! What in the world was I thinking!!! Well, honestly I wasn't sure if we would like traveling or if it would work out or what to expect....SO...before you decide to store all of your "stuff" in storage....RETHINK IT! How much is the "stuff" worth? Consider a last minute garage sale...If I had done that, I would have saved alot of money by now. You can always get new furniture. Just think about it. Thats all!

Just wanted to share!!!
Jennifer Lee, COTA

Excellent point Jennifer!  We just sold and gave away our furniture last week for exactly that reason.

Ditto Jennifer.  I stored all of my "things" for 3 years when i started traveling.  It was a money losing idea.  I wish that I had liquidated everything BEFORE I started traveling.  I eventually gave away all of my furniture to a traveling OT friend that had to stop traveling because she was a new single Mom and needed to be more stable.  She benefitted greatly from my gift, and I got to stop paying STORAGE FEES!!!!

Yes, it's a good thing to re-think.

Every time I come home I give away more stuff, it is crazy all the stuff we think we need!!
I traveled most of this year, by plane and by train with 2 suitcases, thats all.  Bought what I needed and donated when I left.  
The final hurdle is divesting myself of "the american dream", the house with the car in the garage.  Why do I keep it? Oh, yeah, to store my stuff!!!

We had friends that did this for 6 years and at one point even had a storage unit at home and another one in Cali b/c that's where they did a lot of their assignments. We learned from them that it was a waste of money so we actually purchased a new shed that we have set up on our parents property. We figured if we were going to spend money in rent each month why not own a nice shed that we will certainly need someday when we settle down somewhere. And even at that we are storing a bunch of crap that needs to be thrown away! I thought I got rid of almost everything before we started traveling. But once you get used to living with so little you realize how much more stuff you can get rid of and never miss!