Dana K. White

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How a Storage Unit Saved My Sanity (and a GREAT Giveaway from Extra Space Storage!)

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Big Giveaway from Extra Space Storage

When Extra Space Storage asked if they could sponsor a post and an AWESOME giveaway here, I was excited to do it.

There was a time in my life when renting a storage space saved my sanity.

We’d moved. We had two little boys and didn’t know a soul in our new town. It was a good move for us, but I had been very happy where we were.

The stories we’d heard and hoped would happen to us (the ones where someone puts a house on the market and it sells the first day) hadn’t happened.

We tried having my husband live here with his sister until the house sold. Two weeks of attempting to keep the house perfect while also dealing with a 2yo and a 3yo on my own changed our mind. (I was a future Slob Blogger, after all.) We decided it was worth stretching our budget as far as it could possibly go (maybe a little farther) to rent a small house until our old house sold. We wanted to be together.

We moved everything we needed and left a normal-home’s worth of furniture in the house that was on the market.

(Did you catch that? We had enough stuff to fill two houses . . . )

We didn’t park in the garage of the rent house because it was filled with boxes.

It was a two-car garage.

Right after we moved, we found out I was pregnant. We were thrilled, but hormones combined with the stress of a home not selling combined with the fact that I could not seem to make a single friend sent me into a very dark place.

When our house finally sold five months later, things didn’t immediately improve like I’d assumed they would. At the exact same time our house sold, every house in our new (small) town that was a possibility . . . also sold.

AND, we now had EVERYthing we owned (which was WAY too much stuff) in that rent house.

Every wall was hidden behind boxes stacked to the ceiling.

As my daughter’s due date approached and this mama’s claustrophobia became almost unbearable, we made the decision to rent a storage unit.

I hadn’t wanted to rent one. This was a temporary situation. I kept thinking that ANY day we would find our new home and this difficult period would be finished. My excessive frugality and Make It Work!! personality had such a hard time justifying the expense when technically, we had “room” for the boxes, our beds, and our bodies.

We didn’t have room to walk around, but walking around? That’s a luxury.

Thankfully, the pregnancy hormones won. I can’t even express the relief and peace I felt after all that STUFF was in storage and we could finally LIVE in our temporary home.

I’m all for idealism. Now that I’ve been decluttering like a crazy woman for five years, I’m definitely all for purging down to what will actually fit in my house (my CONTAINer).

But I’m mostly for sanity. And for NOT tripping over things that are “temporarily” being stored in the living room because there’s no more room in the garage.

If renting a storage unit means your family can live (not just survive) in your home during a transitional period, it’s money well spent.

It definitely was for us.

The day we brought our daughter home from the hospital, the house we live in now went on the market. We put a contract on it within a week. She was two months old when we moved in, but we enjoyed those two months with her in our small, free-of-boxes-in-the-living-room rent house.

According to Extra Space Storage, most people rent storage units for these reasons:

  1. Moving/downsizing
  2. Life event (going to college, death of a loved one, divorce, etc.)
  3. Infrequently used items (holiday decorations, seasonal equipment, etc.)

About Extra Space Storage: We pride ourselves on being the best in four different areas – customer service, cleanliness, convenience and security. Our goal is to make the self storage experience as convenient and hassle-free as possible for our customers. We’re in the business of storing people’s belongings, keepsakes and memories and we take that very seriously. This is why our facilities implement the highest security technology, perimeter fencing and the majority have a manager that lives on site.

If something truly needs to be stored, and you don’t have real storage space in your home (the master bedroom doesn’t count . . . ), a temporary rented storage space is a great option.

Now for the giveaway details!!! (Y’all, I’m so excited about this!!)

winner of ess

UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed! Congrats to Jen whose comment was randomly chosen by the WordPress Plug-in called: And The Winner Is . . .

The Prize: Extra Space Storage is giving away a $500 Home Depot gift card to be used to help one lucky winner become more organized in their lives.

That’s one lucky winner HERE at A Slob Comes Clean!!!

Restrictions: Winner must be a U.S. resident and be 21 years of age or older.

So how do you enter?

Share a photo of a decluttered space in your home on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter with the hashtag #ESSandslobcomesclean !! Then come back here and leave a comment with the url to your entry!! (I’ll explain how to do that in a moment!)

A decluttered space!! That’s great motivation! And you DON’T have to show a before picture!!!

I know that’s a bit of work, but it’s a $500 Home Depot giftcard! Just think what you could get with that!!

So what do you need to do?

  1. Declutter a space. It can be a cabinet, a drawer, a closet or an entire room.
  2. Take a picture.
  3. Post that picture on Facebook (to the A Slob Comes Clean page or the Extra Space page), to Instagram, OR to Twitter using the hashtag #ESSandslobcomesclean in your post.
  4. Copy the URL of your social media post (detailed photo instructions are below!) and paste it in a comment on THIS post. (Replies to the email by email subscribers won’t count. You need to click on the title of the post in the email to get to the blog to comment.)
  5. Repeat for one of the other social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter) in a NEW comment.
  6. Repeat again for the last of the three social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter) in a NEW comment.
  7. Get an extra entry by liking Extra Space Storage on Facebook and leaving ANOTHER comment saying you did that. (You only need to post a picture to one social media site to be eligible for this additional entry.)
  8. Get even more entries by following Extra Space Storage on Twitter and Google+ and leaving comments saying you did!

Don’t forget that each entry needs to be in its own comment.

Stressed yet? Don’t be. You can enter by only making it through step 4! (But once you’ve done that, why not grab those additional entries!)

And here are instructions (with photos) for grabbing those URLs you need for your comments!

Twitter:

How to get the url of a specific tweet

For Instagram:

how to grab an instagram URL

For Facebook, you can post in this way to either my page or the Extra Space Storage page. Don’t post it on your personal profile or it may not show up.

How to Post and Grab a Time Stamp on Facebook

Please feel free to ask for help!

Now go declutter!!!

 

 

Legal Stuff:

No purchase necessary.  Void where prohibited by law.  One entry per person.  To be eligible, entrants must submit a photo of their decluttered  space. Entrants must be a legal resident of the United States and at least 21 years old.  Contest begins October 15, 2014 and ends October 24, 2014.    After the deadline, Extra Space Storage will select one winner out of all eligible entries in its sole and exclusive discretion.  The winner will be notified by October 25th via email and must respond within 48 hours or will forfeit the prize. The prize will be mailed to the winner by Extra Space Storage within thirty (30) days of being selected.  Any taxes on any prize are the sole responsibility of the winner.  Prize is offered “as is.”  Extra Space Storage is not responsible for late, lost, or incomplete entries.  Extra Space Storage reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel, modify or prematurely conclude the contest for any reason.

 

A few more things for my own sake: ASlobComesClean.com is not responsible for the delivery of the prize. I am being compensated for my time writing this post and hosting this giveaway, but the story about the baby and the stuff-overwhelm and the boxes everywhere is my own.

 

 

 

--Nony

Comments

    • Dana White says

      Great job! Can you go edit your fb post (hover to the right of the text and click on the little down arrow) to include the hashtag: #essandslobcomesclean ? Or you could just add the hashtag as a comment on your photo over there.

  8. gigi says

    I guess I’m the lone dissenter here. There have been many articles written about why it is a bad idea for people with clutter issues to rent storage spaces. I believe those articles have it correct. People pay a lot of money to basically store things that aren’t even worth keeping in the “real” house. And, more often than not, the space that is gained in the house is soon filled with yet more clutter. It is just money going down the drain and leading to greater clutter issues. Far better to spend the time getting rid of the items permanently instead of dragging them to a storage unit, paying to store them for years and then either you, or your heirs, eventually getting rid of them. I really think advising people like us to get storage units is bad advice. Sorry.

    • Dana White says

      I totally agree that long term, indefinite storage is not a good idea for us. However, when someone is in a temporary situation, it really can make a huge difference. I get letters from people who can’t walk in their homes because of a deceased loved one’s furniture that has moved into their home. A temporary storage unit to work out of while working through that stuff so the family can continue living life in the home is worth the money in my opinion.

      • gigi says

        The problem is that it seems in most cases, what is planned to only be temporary, turns into a very long term issue that costs a lot of money, both for storage and eventual disposal, and is really just delaying the decision making that needs to happen. I would bet that greater than 75% of people who say it is only temporary wind up keeping a storage unit for well over a year. And, then if they do clean it out, a great deal of it goes to the dump. If you have a deceased family member’s belongings, go through it, make the decisions now, and, instead of carting the rest to expensive storage, pass along what is useful and dump now what isn’t.

  10. Morgan says

    i would love to get better organizers for our closets! Here is a pic of a decluttered space that I’m using for my daughter’s crib and dresser. I would never have thought I would have room for those in my room, but after doing some declittering they fit in nicely! http://instagram.com/p/uPSrSKLqOR/

  30. Whoa says

    I agree it’s not wise long-term. I once paid for a tiny storage space when I was engaged for about 3 months and another time was when we got 1 month’s free storage for renting a U-Haul, which worked out great.

  63. Dawn says

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=886595034685796&set=o.138124449538517&type=1

    I am really, really hoping a fridge/freezer counts… It was getting desperate, and this contest was the kick in the pants that I needed to get it done. (Thanks for that, BTW.)

    Anyway, I very much enjoy your blog, and it has reduced me to those “somebody understands” tears more than I want to admit. 😉 Thank you for having the courage to start, and then continue this blog.

  82. tammigirl says

    I follow ESS on google+ tammi.velez

    your link didn’t work for me, but I found their google+ via their website… I’m hoping it’s the same and expecting it will be.

  98. Lauren Soini says

    http://instagram.com/p/ujHnfhzOlN/

    Cleaned my Kitchen counter, and the two junk drawers along the counter 🙂 now I can open the drawer and close it again without junk falling all over the place. A lot of the junk was thrown away and a lot got put into ziplocs, like batteries, coughdrops, paper clips, etc. 🙂