Dan Pink, best-selling author of A Whole New Mind, confirmed this staggering statistic I’d heard some years ago as part of my research for Your Spacious Self:
“The self-storage industry is bigger than McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s combined.”*
Ouch.
Whether this fact is still true or not (I wouldn’t be surprised if it were), it still shocks me.
Then I read this New York Times Opinion piece, which offers a whole other spin and resonates even more for me:
“Self-storage, says Richard Burt, a professor of English at the University of Florida, is about storing the self. When we place our personal effects in an air-conditioned locker, we put away part of our physical and emotional being, keeping it on life support for as long as we can foot the bill.”
Double ouch…
But here’s the silver lining:
“Premature heirloom loss can be devastating. The novelist Jessica Anya Blau told me that when she was separating from her first husband, she relocated to another city to attend grad school while he placed their combined possessions in storage. Blau left behind things she loved but could survive without for a while, including albums of baby pictures and some silk dresses and pink china from her grandmother. Alas, her ex neglected to pay the rent on the storage unit, and all its contents were auctioned off, gone from her life forever. Her first reaction was shock and desolation. These were cherished things that couldn’t be replaced. But dismay quickly gave way to feelings of lightness and freedom. She had come to enjoy living in an open space unburdened by things. It felt good to be emptied out.” [From “How to Lose a Legacy” by Ellen Lupton]
How’s this for a radical approach: If you can name what’s in your storage unit (shoebox in the closet, trunk in the attic, bin in the basement), you get to keep it. Everything else is shipped out.
It helps to have friend or a family member by your side (who is not attached to your possessions)…
And allow yourself to feel whatever arises, fully, completely, and compassionately.
