5 ms·

I agree with you and there are short term reasons to put everything in storage. There is another group that just has stuff squirreled away "in case". I personal

I agree with you and there are short term reasons to put everything in storage. There is another group that just has stuff squirreled away "in case". I personally believe that most people would be happier following a less is more philosophy which can be approached simply by throwing out or selling or donating anything you haven't worn/used in the last year (or two).

larrik 9y ago
A lot of these ideas assume childless adults. Bringing kids into things makes everything a lot different.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Yet most of the world manages to live in much smaller homes than Americans, and without self-storage. Getting rid of thing is a necessity especially when you have kids, since their current needs take so much space.
patentatt 9y ago
Yeah, I've seen the reality TV shows where they auction these things off, even the cherry-picked units for TV are like 1/2 absolute junk that literally goes strait into a dumpster.
- jcater 9y ago
  Sure, but that's a somewhat self-selecting group of units -- ones that the renters let fall behind and get auctioned off.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    In fact that is one solution to the junk problem sometimes recommended: if you are not sure put something in a storage unit, pay rent for a year. Anything you haven't gone back for in a years must not be important so let them clean it out for you. In theory you could clean it our yourself for more value (craigslist/ebay), but you run the risk of trying to justify keeping something.
tbirrell 9y ago
Throwing stuff out is hard to do if you are poor or were raised poor. Everything you save now does not have to be bought later. There is a potential use for anything and everything, so you might as well keep it. Granted, at a certain point the cost of the storage facility exceeds the amount saved, but the mindset is still there.
- komali2 9y ago
  Man this rings so true for me, even as I pull an engineer salary now. Keep moving a car around free parking spaces even though I haven't "used' it in a year, still squirrel away a bunch of useless shit because what if! I still have trouble turning down free food even if it isn't in line with my diet x.x poverty habits just stay with you
  - rcr 9y ago
    I just finally rid myself of boxes worth of old computer parts and cables. But what if I need 7 VGA adapters???
    - tbirrell 9y ago
      Murphy's Law dictates you will need them next week.
    - cr0sh 9y ago
      > But what if I need 7 VGA adapters??? All depending on what they were - you might wish someday you had kept one of them! As somebody who "collects" old computer crap (ok, ok - hoards might be a better term), I had a situation not too long back where I needed one of those old adapters. I had purchased an AMD motherboard that had onboard VGA; having gone so long since I last upgraded, I didn't read the fine print saying that onboard VGA was dependent on having an AMD processor with VGA built in (APU I think they called it). I had purchased a different processor for the socket, without that feature - thinking "naw, don't need it, because I'm gonna drop my GPU in there - and switch the BIOS over to use it". I get everything together and I boot it. I get nothing on the monitor, and beeping - POST code saying no video, and I'm like "wtf?". Some quick research and such reveals my mistake: Without the APU version of the CPU, I can't change the BIOS to use the GPU in the PCI-E slot. But I don't want to spend a boatload more money on a CPU just to get this setup. So I have a plan: Somewhere out in my junk I know I have a PCI slot VGA card (like an old S3 Virge or such) - I just have to find it. An hour of digging around finally nets me the card - has 4 meg on it - I figure that's enough to see the BIOS, right? I boot it - and it sorta comes up, but everything's all glitched out, nothing's really working right, then it dumps to a screen with a "not enough video memory" error, and now I'm wondering "huh?". So I go dig some more... 30 minutes of digging, I find a different PCI video card with 8 meg; surely this will work. I slot it in and boot it; finally it boots - and I am greeted with this entire super-graphical fancy GUI for a BIOS setup, complete with mouse and everything! That's how long since I last did anything PC building-wise (I was replacing a Core2Duo machine); my last BIOS was textual. It was pretty apparent why it ran out of memory; honestly, I thought it was stupid - but what'r gunna do, right? So after some orientation and such - I find where on the BIOS it was looking for the video card (of course, defaulting to "on board" - but you would think that if it didn't find it, it would then try the PCI-E slot, but nooooo), change it out, save and shutdown, then re-install my GPU on the PCI-E slot, reboot... ...and it worked. Had I not had that old VGA card (granted, it's not the oldest I have - I have an EISA VGA card somewhere) - I would've been hosed.
cortesoft 9y ago
How would throwing stuff away that is in storage make you happier? I mean, I understand saying it is a waste of money, but if it is in storage and you never look at it or even think about it really, how would it make you happier for it to not be there?
- mjrpes 9y ago
  Everyone is different, but it feels like a weight is lifted off my shoulders when I get rid of stuff I don't need or can't justify keeping. Marie Kondo wrote a book on this: The Japanese Art of Decluttering. https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing/dp/1607747308 https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Declutter...

larrik 9y ago

A lot of these ideas assume childless adults. Bringing kids into things makes everything a lot different.

icebraining 9y ago
Yet most of the world manages to live in much smaller homes than Americans, and without self-storage. Getting rid of thing is a necessity especially when you have kids, since their current needs take so much space.

patentatt 9y ago

Yeah, I've seen the reality TV shows where they auction these things off, even the cherry-picked units for TV are like 1/2 absolute junk that literally goes strait into a dumpster.

jcater 9y ago
Sure, but that's a somewhat self-selecting group of units -- ones that the renters let fall behind and get auctioned off.
- bluGill 9y ago
  In fact that is one solution to the junk problem sometimes recommended: if you are not sure put something in a storage unit, pay rent for a year. Anything you haven't gone back for in a years must not be important so let them clean it out for you. In theory you could clean it our yourself for more value (craigslist/ebay), but you run the risk of trying to justify keeping something.

tbirrell 9y ago

Throwing stuff out is hard to do if you are poor or were raised poor. Everything you save now does not have to be bought later. There is a potential use for anything and everything, so you might as well keep it. Granted, at a certain point the cost of the storage facility exceeds the amount saved, but the mindset is still there.

komali2 9y ago
Man this rings so true for me, even as I pull an engineer salary now. Keep moving a car around free parking spaces even though I haven't "used' it in a year, still squirrel away a bunch of useless shit because what if! I still have trouble turning down free food even if it isn't in line with my diet x.x poverty habits just stay with you
- rcr 9y ago
  I just finally rid myself of boxes worth of old computer parts and cables. But what if I need 7 VGA adapters???
  - tbirrell 9y ago
    Murphy's Law dictates you will need them next week.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    > But what if I need 7 VGA adapters??? All depending on what they were - you might wish someday you had kept one of them! As somebody who "collects" old computer crap (ok, ok - hoards might be a better term), I had a situation not too long back where I needed one of those old adapters. I had purchased an AMD motherboard that had onboard VGA; having gone so long since I last upgraded, I didn't read the fine print saying that onboard VGA was dependent on having an AMD processor with VGA built in (APU I think they called it). I had purchased a different processor for the socket, without that feature - thinking "naw, don't need it, because I'm gonna drop my GPU in there - and switch the BIOS over to use it". I get everything together and I boot it. I get nothing on the monitor, and beeping - POST code saying no video, and I'm like "wtf?". Some quick research and such reveals my mistake: Without the APU version of the CPU, I can't change the BIOS to use the GPU in the PCI-E slot. But I don't want to spend a boatload more money on a CPU just to get this setup. So I have a plan: Somewhere out in my junk I know I have a PCI slot VGA card (like an old S3 Virge or such) - I just have to find it. An hour of digging around finally nets me the card - has 4 meg on it - I figure that's enough to see the BIOS, right? I boot it - and it sorta comes up, but everything's all glitched out, nothing's really working right, then it dumps to a screen with a "not enough video memory" error, and now I'm wondering "huh?". So I go dig some more... 30 minutes of digging, I find a different PCI video card with 8 meg; surely this will work. I slot it in and boot it; finally it boots - and I am greeted with this entire super-graphical fancy GUI for a BIOS setup, complete with mouse and everything! That's how long since I last did anything PC building-wise (I was replacing a Core2Duo machine); my last BIOS was textual. It was pretty apparent why it ran out of memory; honestly, I thought it was stupid - but what'r gunna do, right? So after some orientation and such - I find where on the BIOS it was looking for the video card (of course, defaulting to "on board" - but you would think that if it didn't find it, it would then try the PCI-E slot, but nooooo), change it out, save and shutdown, then re-install my GPU on the PCI-E slot, reboot... ...and it worked. Had I not had that old VGA card (granted, it's not the oldest I have - I have an EISA VGA card somewhere) - I would've been hosed.

cortesoft 9y ago

How would throwing stuff away that is in storage make you happier? I mean, I understand saying it is a waste of money, but if it is in storage and you never look at it or even think about it really, how would it make you happier for it to not be there?

mjrpes 9y ago
Everyone is different, but it feels like a weight is lifted off my shoulders when I get rid of stuff I don't need or can't justify keeping. Marie Kondo wrote a book on this: The Japanese Art of Decluttering. https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Decluttering-Organizing/dp/1607747308 https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changing-Magic-Tidying-Declutter...