Storing It

So, I know that you've all gone through and thrown out nearly all your worldly possessions, and are now sitting looking at the rest wondering what to do with it! Here's the other half of that first hurdle.

Where to Put It

The first question to ask is - where is it going to go? This could affect what you decide to store. If you will have relatively easy access, you might store more. If it's going to cost money to store it, you might look harder at your pile.

Ideally, find a relative or lifelong friend who is likely to stay put and is willing to pile it in a corner in their loft or garage. If that person happens to be so generous towards you as to be willing to occasionally fish something out and post it, that could be very useful.

Paying for storage is worth investigating, if only to assure yourself it's not the best solution. To my mind, the potential advantage of commercial storage is that you can choose an ideal location - for me, this would be near central London, my travel hub. This means you can regularly drop by to pick things up without going far out of your way. However, even a small volume of storage space in a big city will cost a significant amount - and the staff will surely not post things for you.

It might be that commercial storage is the only option you've got for all your boxes - in which case, perhaps try budgeting for 6 months to see how things work out for you. After that point I'd suggest going back to the "Getting Rid of All Your Stuff" post and looking at it all again!

Packing it Up

Use boxes, not bags: they're stackable and can be posted. If you use plastic boxes, use the heavy-duty ones that won't end up splitting under weight - but they have some weight in themselves and I don't know if they can be posted as-is.

I used strong cardboard boxes. You can buy great parcel-boxes from post offices, but they tend to be quite small. I went to a big DIY / home-improvement store and bought boxes designed for home-removal - around 50x50x100cm. These needed some careful taping to be suitable for postage but they did the job well.

If you do use cardboard boxes, consider lining them with a large sheet of plastic. Long-term, this will help prevent the contents going mouldy if the box gets damp; also if your box actually gets wet, it's likely to fall apart, but if done right the lining will help keep the contents together. Imagine, if you will, the bottom falling out of a wet box in the delivery warehouse and scattering your apparently irreplaceable crap across the floor. (And if that doesn't trouble you - why are you keeping it?)

Don't overload any one box - try to mix a few heavy things with the lighter stuff in each. The things you expect to actually need at some point - professional books for example - try to keep together.

Record what goes into each box and clearly number it on several sides. Record the general themes (books, clothes, letters...) and any individual items that you think you might want to dig out. Maintain the list until you seal the box. Do something idiot-proof with the list - like email it to yourself in Gmail.

All this takes time but means that in 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years when you remember there was that thing or that book that you need, you can quickly find out which box it is in, you can find the box number without restacking them all, and when you open it up it hasn't gone mouldy. If you're leaving these boxes with friends or family, try to make it easy enough that they can fish things out for you - which can be a real lifesaver.

How to Get It There

You will know a bunch of ways to get your stuff where it's needed, but as I've hinted, the main one I want to call out is post - especially if it's overseas.

One big advantage of posting is that you can do it box by box over time, which gets things out of the way. If you have time, don't pack just to get it there - pack them as above, ready for storage. The chances are you won't bother to systematically repack - so just do it right the first time.

I've found that while posting from the UK to elsewhere is prohibitively expensive, posting from Europe to the UK or anywhere else is often quite reasonable. For example, you can send 31,5 kg in a 120x60x60cm box from Germany to the UK, with some insurance and basic tracking for 40 EUR. In the other direction, it seems to be twice as expensive. I would expect that about half of European countries offer a good deal on this and I'd like to know how it is within the US - perhaps readers can tell me their experiences.

If you consider flying it, remember that the cut-price airlines tend to overcharge on extra weight - a more expensive ticket may save you money on baggage costs. Ultimately though, there's only so much you can wheel into an airport.

My Experience

My stuff is all stored at my parents place. Most of it is in the garage, still in the boxes I first packed it in. However, I actually had to do all this in two passes. First, I had to move out from my apartment in Germany, back to my parents place in the UK. Then, they were moving to a smaller house just a couple of months later! That meant they absolutely did not want dozens of new boxes - and I had to go through all stuff I'd piled up there since my childhood as well!

I ended up re-packing some of the first set of boxes, which damaged them and I didn't maintain the lists I've made. As a result, some boxes are in a poor state and there are a few books and so on that I'd like to find but aren't worth the search. I only labelled one or two sides of each box and that makes it a pain trying to find them in the stack.

After that, I really did get all my worldly possessions down to about a dozen boxes in a garage, and a travel bag.

I did post everything back, travelling fairly light on the flight home. I sent six boxes and it was nearly 8 weeks from posting the first box to posting the last. I believe I spent around 180 Euros on postage.

Although I didn't expect to be travelling quite so much over the following years, I did fully expect to leave a lot of it there for a long time. Around two-thirds is still in the garage, with the other third having migrated indoors to cupboards and shelves as I needed it.

The garage roof for their new house leaks a little, so I'm glad I lined the boxes - I mostly used some really thick plastic we had around from a sofa delivery and so far I haven't found that anything has deteriorated. The longer it stays there, the more glad I am of the efforts I put into packing it up.

My mum helps out in various ways you might hear about in future posts, but a common thing is to post me things. As long as I know roughly were something is, she's happy to find it and get it to me, which has been really, really useful over and over again. My parents place is not quite a home-base, but it is a way-station and a depot.

I recently found a photo of my bedroom, just before I'd moved out, and sure there are things that I miss, but I know they're in those boxes and frankly that's still the best place for them!

Finally, I'd like to admit that my final box from Germany was less well organised. With time ticking away before my flight and after a late night (those last-minute social connections!), I placed a final box in the middle of my flat and ran around throwing into it all the random bits and pieces I still had. No list, no lining, no careful packing, just a cardboard box full of random crap rattling around. The streets were covered in melting snow and the box got wet on the way to the post office, dropped off immediately before I left for the airport. I did fear a sorting-office explosion, but it survived the trip.

So, with that done... we're portable!

YMMV