We Save So Much Stuff But Where Do We Put it All?

August 17, 2021 Examiner Media Home Guru

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 find room?

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 which show best are those where all the traditional storage spaces – the attic, basement and garage shelving – are bare.

When I owned a single-family home, my attic and garage looked like storage rental facilities, but not nearly as neat. And when it came time to sell that home, we hired a crew to clean out our basement, which had been packed with possessions to the beams overhead. There was clear evidence there of many different careers and lifetimes, including those of our parents and grandparents, along with tools and leftover materials from house renovation.

One of the workmen took me aside in the basement 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 day.

My propensity to hang on to stuff started young. Maybe I had thought that someday I would be famous and 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 showed 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 when my wife and I married. (My wife had connections.) Since then, that one box has multiplied like loaves and fishes.

By the time I was a teenager, I was collecting books and phonograph records before the time of downloading audio files, never thinning them out and always saving them. (Anybody want a rare collection of impressive 33 rpms from the ‘60s?) By the time I married, I went on to saving photographs well before the days of digital images. I documented every move my family and I made, starting with our honeymoon.

Then my wife and I started collecting things together and, by the time we got into the sideline of an antiques business, 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.

However, we did come up with some interesting alternatives to storage in the attic or basement. My wife stored her fancy table linens, which she used maybe three or four times a year, in our living room in drawers from a 19^th century bookcase on chest.

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

The Internet and big-box retailers are rich with the tools needed to store things properly.

And for those who need industrial strength help with storage, there is always the great PODS concept, whose onetime slogan was “The Best Moving & Storage Idea Ever.” I’m inclined to agree. Where the company will deliver a POD to a private home for “temporary” storage during a house renovation or preparing for a move, I have seen them stay on properties seemingly indefinitely, and there may be some local ordinances discouraging that.

A half-dozen years ago, I moved from a large colonial home with seemingly unlimited storage space in the attic and basement, as well as a garage. Today, I live in a condo with a storage cage in a room down the hall. There, I see the storage areas for the other condo owners, and I must admit that in comparison to my neighbors, my space is packed.

Other owners seem to have gotten their act together and store minimal items. 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 keep and don’t use. Now, if only I were able to accept that advice years ago.

Bill Primavera is a licensed Realtor (www.PrimaveraHomes.com) affiliated with Coldwell Banker and a marketing practitioner (www.PrimaveraPR.com). For questions or comments about the housing market, or selling or buying a home, he can be reached at 914-522-2076.