Years back one of our clients had to suddenly move to Vancouver. Everything happened so quickly and she was forced to squeeze out of her lease early and place the contents of her 1-bedroom apartment into a storage facility.
And off she went to begin her journey. New school, new job, friends to make, parties to go to, studying and exams to write. Fast forward 3 + years and she lands back in Montreal just like the good old days and she is ready to move into her new apartment.
Moving day arrives and Bust a Move moving arrive on time as expected and begin to empty her locker. She mentions that her boyfriends apartment is already furnished and she will be throwing out most of her things and just keeping personal items. In the end the movers delivered the bar stool (see above) and around 6 boxes of personal items to the apartment. They brought the remaining contents of the locker to renaissance to be donated.
So let's do the math. The storage was $92/month and she used it for 39 months. That's $3,588!!! And all she kept was 1 stool that sells for $49 at Ikea. She could have bought 73 stools for that price!
Sometimes it's better to cut ties with your furniture/possessions. Instead of spending that money she could have liquidated her stuff at a garage/moving sale and maybe made $500-$1,000. Value your items with a dollar amount and estimate the length of storage needed to determine whether it's worth the cost of storage. Your furniture will not get more fashionable or comfortable over time so it's better to make that call early on!
As for our client, well she's probably just living her life, going about her day, sitting on Montreals most expensive bar stool.
