Self storage is a 20 billion dollar industry. Primarily an American phenomenon, of the 56,000 self storage facilities world wide 46,000 are in the United States, and one in six families rents a storage unit.
My friends, we have too much stuff! And, we have to start throwing this junk out. Hell, I'd need two 20 cubic yard dumpsters for right here where I'm sitting. In the past, I have felt that it's a crime, albeit minor, to throw out a book, even a bad "airport" (bought at the airport in desperation) detective novel. Not anymore. Those wastes of perfectly good trees (often stupefyingly poorly written) are going out. Vinyl? I have closets full of LPs. (Ok, I'll keep the Miles Davis and Charles Lloyd.) I even have three army uniforms and have no idea how I got them! (Each has the insignia of different rank, so they are at least a record of my tumultuous career in the military; the last being one of a private.
Yes, I confess I have a storage unit. It is filled with old computers and monitors, old televisions, and tax records going back to 1973. My children, as I'm sure do yours, have the most well documented lives in history. Unplayable old format videos, and everything they ever did in school, from kindergarten to the 12th grade. Boxes and boxes of it. (Will they have their own libraries like Bush and Reagan?)
Getting rid of stuff is more than the idea of traveling lighter here on the back nine of life. It's simply not fair to those fore-mentioned kids. When my wife and I go, they will need six months and their own land-fill to get any property we leave them ready to sell.
The most self-delusional words in our language are: "Hey, I might need that." And, my wife is worse than I am. I tell her that every day something -- the mail, a pair of socks, a shirt, a new skillet, STUFF --comes into the house, and I don't see anything going out, nothing. Magazines a year old, and she says, "Don't throw that out. There's an article in there I want to read." Then on weekends she goes to yard-sales and brings home other people's junk! Huh?
Do we fear impermanence? Is a giant pile of trash tantamount to Grant's Tomb or the Lincoln Memorial? It's true, I do feel somewhat diminished throwing out an old, rusted lawn mower with a frozen engine. It's like my time with that mower is gone from my life, or maybe never even existed. And, If I throw it out, then it surely can't go into my museum to myself.
The sad thing is, I may not have enough time left to get rid of all this stuff. And, If our kids have any wits about them, they'll bury us in a hole about 50 feet square and twenty feet deep, and throw all this junk in there with us. Like a couple of Egyptian Pharaohs we might need it where we're going.
B. O.
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