Storage Peace

As opposed to Storage Wars.

Oldest nephew and I have been tackling the job of emptying my mom's storage space and trying to get other people to take things. It's a nice excuse to hang out and I could not do this without him. It has to be done.

Storage spaces are a rip. I know that many of the items in the space are valuable, but I estimate that we have spent 7 grand on the space since we moved mom two years ago. That's real money. And by now those items, even if sold, could not make up for it. Plus I'd have to do the work. No way, man.

So far we have met once at the house to look at items and add numbers to the boxes and boxes to the spreadsheet. We met twice to look into every box and add numbers to boxes that didn't have them. And yesterday we met to go over the last boxes and take stuff to Goodwill and the dump. The taking and dumping is being done by my nephew, not me.

Everything on the left and the right in this photo is now permanently dealt with. 

And as luck would have it, friends from work are outfitting their rental and need some house stuff. They were able to come take a look at everything. In the photo above, they're walking in with my nephew. Why? Because I got distracted while looking for photos on my laptop and noticed that I'd entered my mom's name incorrectly in her cremation order (which she still does not need) and I was correcting that mistake on the phone while waiting for our friends to get there, so neph went downstairs to retrieve them. Note that I decided to remove the people in this photo without reading the instructions on how to use Photoshop's content-aware tool. 

I was left with something more like Nudes Descending a Staircase With Disembodied Arm Held Aloft in Greeting. I kinda like it.

The friends walked out with a bunch of kitchen stuff, a vintage hamper, my grandmother's art deco stew pot, a big old television -- and let me know that they have people who will take the linens if we need someone to. Muuuch appreciated.

Several big loads down the quirky elevator later, the neph's enormous Honda Pilot was filled with boxes. Only one thing was rejected by the dump -- his stepdad's desktop copy machine. Considering, this is fabulous. Things are seeming so much more manageable, and it's only the 8th of September. Other relatives are planning a pilgrimage for later in the month in which they will come take what they like.