Humility. I got a pretty good sized dose of it recently. My husband and I like to find ways to make money. My main profession is serving and he is a banquet server. On the side, we like to go to yard sales and estate sales and look for things to buy and flip for a profit. It's fun and we really enjoy it. One thing we'd always wanted to do was buy a storage unit at auction. Sure, yes, maybe we spent a little too much time watching storage wars. That was my trash TV at the time it first came out, however, I didn't really want to do the in-person auctions. I was worried we'd get carried away and just bid until we were broke. Enter online storage auctions! I watch this site religiously, always looking for what could be a good deal. I found one I liked the look of towards the end of August. I felt like a lot of the people that normally bid on these lockers were getting their last vacations of the summer done because no one else bid on this one. It had an a/c unit front and center! Even if nothing else was salvageable, the a/c was a great find for us to keep or sell. I got the unit for $10. There was a 15% fee to the auction site and taxes, but for less than $15, I had a storage unit! I was so excited and more than a little nervous. I hadn't told my husband I was bidding on this unit. I didn't see the point! I had bid on probably 10-15 units in the past, but never had I gotten close to getting it. So, I put in the bid in the morning of the last day and was the only bidder the entire day. After I got home from work I mentioned to him I had won a storage locker unit. He sighed and asked what time we were getting started. 😆
The next day I took off in my truck. I was just going to go through everything and bring home the stuff we were keeping. I was going to wait until the next day to actually get going with removing everything else. Turns out, I have absolutely no inkling of how much stuff someone can fit into a 5x10 storage unit! There was a LOT of stuff. Clothes, scrapbooking supplies, party lite candles and holders, toys, toys, toys, a few pieces of furniture, pictures, journals, kitchen supplies, dirty laundry, duvets, comforters, shoes, just...everything someone might have in their lives. The first couple of hours I spent trying to make a dent, and I did. Along the way I found a woman's life. I found her yearbooks first, class of '04 then a shoebox full to bursting with pictures from her early twenties. She was a Jameson's girl at one point. More pictures of her happy and with a young man. At some point she had two children. They were beautiful. Then I found some books. AA the 12 step program, Domestic violence and you, were a couple of the titles of the them. Then the journals. I didn't read them all as there were so many, but I read a few pages of one that just broke my heart. She wrote her children letters that she never sent telling them she loved them so much, that she missed them so much and she wished she could have them with her. She wrote about how they would live together if they could. They would communicate and try and work things out together. She said she was so sorry. She felt terrible. In that way the unit was utterly heartbreaking. Seeing her grow from a young, hopeful teen, to an abused and possibly abusive adult, was an awful feeling. There but for the grace of god go I.
I spoke with the storage unit facility manager before I left. She was taking pictures of other units that hadn't been paid for for a long time. She told me she was new there and that she had about 30 storage units that had been abandoned. No one had bothered trying to auction off the contents since before the pandemic. So, the unit I bought was there since at least January of 2020. Probably longer. I think about this woman occasionally. I wonder if she is living a happier life now, or if she made it at all. Alcohol, drugs, abuse, it takes incredible strength to get away and stay away.
I plan on doing more units in the future and if you're interested, I'll share those stories too. Take care of you and try to hold on and ask for help if you need it. M.
