Storage: We Save More Stuff, But Where to Put It?

January 25, 2022 Examiner Media

Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.

By Bill Primavera

Our homes are where we eat, sleep, play, sometimes work and store things we’ve finished using but somehow can’t bear to throw away. There are many reasons we may want to hold on to stuff we no longer need. But where do we put it all?

Granted, some homeowners achieve living on the light side where nothing is hidden and what you see is what you get. Or they’ve gotten religion just before the sale of a home. The homes on the market that show best are those where all the traditional storage spaces – the attic, basement, garage and large closets – are bare.

In my own home, a Trump Park condo, my storage room looks like a commercial storage facility, but not as neat. A few years ago, when my wife and I were preparing to sell our former large home, we hired a crew to clean out our basement, which had been packed with possessions from cement floor to beams overhead. There was clear evidence there of many different careers and lifetimes, including those of our parents, even our grandparents, along with tools and leftover materials from house renovation.

One helper took me aside and told me how dangerous it was to have saved enamel paint and paint thinner so close to the boiler. Fortunately, it was before I started writing as The Home Guru, so I was only half embarrassed. At first, it was a visceral experience to instruct the workers what to throw out for bulk pick up. But as the project wore on and I wore out, memories were discarded wholesale. It felt liberating.

Actually, my wife is the more practical one between us. When she took charge for having our garage cleaned out prior to our sale of our home and a helper asked her what should be saved, she replied simply, “Just keep the cars.”

My propensity to hang on to stuff started young. Maybe I had thought that someday I would be so famous that future generations would want some piece of who I was and what I did in life. But since I turned out to be just an ordinary guy, I have no excuse.

It all started when I was an adolescent and my mother gave me a white envelope on which was written, “My Son William’s First Haircut, Aged 2.” Inside were Titian red curls that bear little resemblance to my hair today. It was a real curiosity for me.

That was the first item I tucked away in a sturdy cardboard box that originally housed Florida oranges we would receive each Christmas from my Aunt Helen. Through the years, that box accommodated all my other official documents, from my birth certificate to a special blessing from the Pope (my wife had connections) when my wife and I married. Since then, that one box has multiplied like loaves and fish.

By the time I was a teenager, I was saving books and records well before the time of downloading audio files, never thinning out the collection. By the time I married, I went on to photography as a hobby, saving photographs well before the days of digital images. I documented every move my family and I made, starting with our honeymoon, and still have boxes of every picture ever taken.

Then my wife and I started collecting things together and, by the time we got into the antiques business part-time, the floodgates opened. We never got to the point of hoarding, and our house was always tidy, but we never really organized our storage of the things we didn’t have room to display.

Perhaps as homes get downsized, efficient storage will be more important. Today, there are many resources for creative solutions to tucking things away.

Retailers such as The Container Store are rich with the tools needed to store things properly. Home Depot boasts closet kits, as well as a full assortment of containers for the garage or outdoor shed. The ones I like best feature clear plastic sides and bottoms where you can actually see what’s stored in them. Who remembers what’s contained in a big cardboard box stored from 30 years ago without opening it to remind yourself?

And for those who need industrial strength help with storage, there is always the great PODS concept. While the company will deliver a POD to a private home for “temporary” storage during house renovation or preparing for a move, I have seen them stay on properties seemingly indefinitely. There may be some local ordinances discouraging that.

If I were to dispense any advice about storage, it would be as simplistic as to suggest that we should all better manage what we collect in the first place. Now, if only I were able to accept that advice years ago.

Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc., the longest-running public relations agency in Westchester (www.PrimaveraPR.com). To engage the services of The Home Guru and his team to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.