Frazz by Jef Mallett for November 03, 2022

For crying out loud, enough already.

SELF storage ? People store themselves in there ??? The horror !

I’ve had the misfortune of having to move the contents of more than a few storage units. The monthly rent for these storage spaces in the US range from $70 to $300 depending on size and location. Despite what you may see on certain “reality” TV shows, the contents of the vast majority of storage units are worth less than $100.

My mother-in-law, for example, after moving from a house into a small assisted living apartment, has been spending $150 a month for five years now (that’s $9000 and counting) storing what I can only describe as junk. I’m talking a dozen old broken vacuum cleaners that cost $20 maximum when new. A moldy wheelchair that needs to go to the dump because the mold can’t be cleaned out of it. Water-damaged books. Yarn with that musty smell that can’t be cleaned out.

Oh, no, she needs to sort through it all, but she can only sort out one box every other week because her apartment and her car are so full of other janky junk that she will never be able to use anymore due to physical disabilities.

Self storage is a low overhead, high return business.

Short-term storage can be useful, but too many people put stuff away that they’ll never think about again. Secret hoarding.

That’s how the Betty Boards got into circulation amongst us Deadheads.

Think of it as Urban Archeology.

What does a janitor need a pen for?

But then there would not be a need for a show like Storage Wars!

Always carry a ‘decoy’ pen to lend with expectation of not getting it back.

Lending anything with an expectation that it will be returned is a recipe for frustration. Including large sums to relatives, especially…

What pen?

My question would be, how often do you use the stuff in the storage unit? I’m in a condo now with other people who’ve also downsized. It’s pretty common for people to get a storage unit during the downsizing (although we didn’t) and defer choices about what to keep, what to get rid of — but then years later they have never taken the next step to sort the stuff out.

See the George Carlin routine about My Stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDX_M1DIYuo&ab_channel=FrustratedIdealist

Well stop paying the monthly cost, and it gets auctioned off! (Doesn’t anyone watch TV???)

Dogbert said your right to your pen disappears as soon as you take your eyes off it.

I’ve never seen a self-storage facility larger than a football field. Where do these statistics come from?

Has Frazz’s left eye just recently gotten bigger than the right one, or has it always been that way and I’m just now noticing it?

I had a storage shed in my backyard that never seemed worth the $1000 to repair it, because the stuff I kept in there was worth less than $1000. The shed eventually rotted out and I had it removed (for around $1000). Now I am faced with whether I want to spend 5x that much to replace it. It is strange that I am even tempted to do so, but the stuff I had stored in there is strewn about now.