Here is where it all started!
This all started when it was bill pay day. Life was great, we had built our home out in the country, our large shop was complete, and we were living well. The last of our five daughters was a junior in high school and soon off to college. We were going to be empty nesters!!
As I stated it was bill pay day and the storage unit bill came across my desk…again. $165 for our storage unit. When we moved to Louisiana it took longer than expected to get our home built so we rented a storage unit, the biggest they had (we had a lot of stuff). Now we had been in the home for well over two years and the shop was about six months old. However, we were still paying that storage unit bill of $165 a month. Ok so you know how when you move and the last two or three days are the hardest because it is all the stuff you really don’t want to move but don’t know what to do with either? Well, that is what was in there. The stuff we did not want to deal with. So, for over two years we just paid the $165 and did not have to see or deal with the stuff. In case you are wondering that is over $3960. Yep, that is a lot of money.
It hit me like the smell of roux on the first cold day of the year in Louisiana…we are paying to store junk. We are paying a lot of money to store junk. It was February, the shortest month of the year, when I come to this revelation. That meant we had three days to move out without paying again instead of seven days. I was excited about stopping this bleeding of paying for the storing of stuff, however, my husband and 16-year-old daughter were not as enthused.
I told them it would be an adventure as to what we could sell, give away, keep and burn!! We loaded up bright and early on a Friday morning and began to go through the mess and be out by Sunday. We took all three trucks. What we put in my husband’s we kept, what went into my truck was to donate and what was put in my daughter’s we burned! Yep, we burned about a third of the stuff we were paying to store. Crazy; right? We did sell about $600 of stuff and my daughter found $10 in an old birthday card, so we were able to recoup some of our money.
Ok so now that we stopped paying for the storage unit what did we do with the extra $165 a month?
OMG our credit cards. Remember I said we were living well…yeah too well. Check my blog for the rest of the stories of how we began the adventure to FIX and CHANGE how we were living today!