Musings at Altitude

I spent yesterday helping my son get some furniture into his condo.  Bare essentials actually.  A couch, a dining room table, a desk, some chairs and a lamp.  All stuff that we had stuffed away in two small storage sheds.  Things we’re paying quite a bit (monthly storage fee) to hold on to, but certainly things that we will most likely never use again.  Things we constantly talk about taking out of storage and getting rid of, but things that seem to remain in the family regardless, and the monthly costs keep adding up.

But yesterday we needed that stuff in storage.  The desk, dining room tables, and chairs were in storage.  And for the first time in probably about a year, we went over and opened the two small sheds and sorted through what we had to find those few things that he needed.

Sure enough, we ended up having to pull out everything in one of the sheds in order to get to the couch that we needed.  And we didn’t need the couch for him, but instead we needed it for us, because we were giving him the couch that we had in our living room.  And the things we were pulling out weren’t those very light, easy to carry things you find around the house, it included one big dresser and worst of all, a Captain’s Bed used by my 15 year old when she was younger that weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 pounds.  Seriously.  Either it weighed a thousand pounds or I can’t lift the things I could when I was younger.  OK…please don’t comment on that. 

So we took the very comfortable couch that was perfect for “lounging” and gave it to him.  Then we took the very comfortable chair that matched the very comfortable couch and moved it up into my 15 year old’s room, leaving us with absolutely nothing to sit on in the main level living room area of our house.  Thus the need to pull things out of our furniturial history in order to keep people off the floor or out of our kitchen (the only other close sitting area).

By late afternoon, we had all the stuff in his condo, and then by early evening had our house rearranged to accommodate the new, yet old, furniture that we needed to fill the holes left in our living room.

So, the not-so-comfortable couch –

and the not-so-comfortable chairs –

are back in our living room.

Some would say that this is the classic example of why you keep all that old stuff stored away in fairly expensive and environmentally protected facilities.  For this very reason.  For that one time in the future when you need that specific piece of furniture, and thus don’t have to buy a new one. 

But I’m doing some simple math now.  We pay $50 per month per shed, so $100 a month total to keep these things.  We’ve had that not-so-comfortable (yet very flowery) couch in that shed for 3 years now, paying $3,600 in that three years to store the couch, that Captain’s Bed, and various other things that we will most likely never use again.  So, for $3,600, we kept that couch for just this occasion, and now have it back in use again.  And it’s very likely that we could have found a perfectly good couch at furniture row here in town for less than $500.

So, my simple math tells me that we’ve spent $3,600 for three years to save $500.

It’s time to get rid of the storage units.

PS.  Denise has been telling me this for at least 30 of the 36 months we’ve had them.  One of these days I’ll start listening.