Mission Accomplished!

I posted a little over a week ago about our goal to move out of our two existing storage units and consolidate into a smaller unit. Today...mission accomplished!!!

We spent most of last weekend at storage, and started moving into our 10'x10' unit. We even got my smaller unit closed out last Saturday.  Donovan did a really great job of being willing to let go of a lot of his stuff, and he posted Craigslist ads galore and got rid of most of the big things last Sunday.

Our goal was to be out of both units by the end of the month, so Donovan spent quite a bit of time at storage yesterday and today, dealing with the last 10-15% of our stuff.  After lunch today I went back with him and we got everything moved out of his storage unit before the office closed at 5:00pm.  There's a whole pile of stuff in our new storage unit that he's going to put up on Ebay this week (already photographed, boxed and weighed for shipping), so that'll go away soon enough!

Donovan's 10'x20' storage unit, emptied today!

It's amazing to think that a week and a half ago this wasn't even a possibility for us, and that through communicating with each other about what was important to us, we got it done!  The impossible became possible!!  I have to say that I did get a little whiny about storage taking up our whole weekend this weekend after we spent so much time there last weekend.  But I got over it, and we're both super stoked now that it's done and the mental clutter is gone!!!  Woohoo!!!  :)

The Things That Move Us to Action

Last year in July, after living in Donovan's house for over a year, I finally got my butt in gear and rented out my house.  Which meant that I needed to get all my crap out of my house.  Which meant a whole lot of Craigslist ads, and ultimately, renting a storage unit.  I didn't actually have *that* much stuff to store, so I got a small 5'x10' space that cost about $60/month.

While we were on our honeymoon in August, as a surprise for me, Donovan had some movers come to his house and move a whole bunch of *his* crap into a storage unit so that we could start to remodel the house when we got back.  He did have a lot of stuff, so he got a 10'x20' space that cost about $200/month.

Doing the quick math (approximately), we've spent close to $3,000 on our combined storage units over the past year.

The big storage unit has been a point of contention between us, with me wanting us to just give away or get rid of a bunch of the things we're storing, and Donovan wanting to sell a lot of it through Craigslist or EBay.  I'll admit, I got on his ass about it quite a bit in the first few months.  Then, at some point, I pretty much just gave up and figured he'd deal with it in his own time.

A few weeks ago my good friend Roz told me about a garage sale that she was going to put on with her mom.  What a perfect opportunity to get rid of some of the bigger things in our big storage unit!  Maybe some of the furniture, etc.  I hesitated to bring it up to Donovan, since it had become a bit of a sensitive topic for us.  But then a few days ago I suggested the idea, and he liked it!  Woohoo!

So our plan for today was to go to the storage unit and clear out a path to the one piece of furniture we were pretty sure we wanted to take up to the garage sale.  And here's where it got interesting for us.  This morning we started talking about it, and decided that it was silly for us to haul around this large piece of furniture, when we could just give it away for free on Craigslist and someone would come pick it up.  This led to a general discussion about the storage units, in a very civilized manner.  And what we came up with was a concrete goal to get rid of a bunch of stuff mostly out of the big storage unit this weekend, and then by next weekend consolidate both of our storage units into one 10'x10' unit.  We figure that we'll probably have some sort of outside-the-house storage solution until we get a bigger place, but having one unit that costs about $100/month is better than the almost $300/month we're paying for our two units now!

We spent about five hours today working at the storage units (it's Donovan's day off), and we *filled* the van with all sorts of odds and ends for the garage sale!  We went through SO many boxes and got rid of SO much stuff!  We took it all up to Roz's mom's house in Escondido, and then this weekend we will post some of the bigger items on Craigslist for free.  We already have a 10'x10' unit reserved at the storage facility, so we're completely on track to successfully reaching our goal by next weekend!

What had been a totally stagnant situation, a point of contention in our relationship moved HUGELY today, all because Roz suggested that we participate in her garage sale.  Isn't it interesting the things that move us to action sometimes??

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