Storage Units Are Not for the Faint-Hearted

Okay. So now you have been brave and purchased your first storage unit. You have high hopes and dreams. The number one being that you will be able to sell the stuff for a profit! You have it to your home, garage, or barn. This is where the feelings of being overwhelmed surface. It is one thing to have a "ton" of your own stuff, but it can be overwhelming to have a "ton" of stuff that once belonged to someone else. You have absolutely no idea what you will find in the boxes.

Sorting through a storage unit of stuff is not for the faint-hearted. REMEMBER you are dealing with items from someone else's life. They may not have the same values as yours. You may want to protect your children from view points that may not be the same as yours by not letting them go through the stuff. If you are a person that is easily shocked, you probably don't want to be in the business of buying and reselling units. The reading material that you find in storage boxes may not be the kind you would allow in your house.

I remember in the early days of my adventure there was one unit we labeled "The Porn Unit." Oh my, it was a shocker. Everything in the storage unit was neatly boxed and the boxes were stacked high. I won the bid for $25.00. I was sure we would find a lot of good stuff to sell. Probably everything in the unit would have sold, but I WAS NOT WILLING to sell it. There were boxes of porn material. Then there was more of it interspersed in the boxes of regular household stuff.

Now here is another valuable lesson. When going through a unit, if you find questionable literature and items that you want to destroy, put them all in one trash sack or area. Don't spread them out through the general garbage. That way you know exactly where the stuff is that needs to be burned because you don't want to put in the curbside trash for some kid to find and be warped for life! This leads to another valuable lesson.

Magazines DO NOT burn EASILY! Don't think you can drop pounds of magazines into the trash barrel, drop a match, and they will just disappear in flames. It doesn't happen. You just about have to burn them one at a time. If you are planning to shred them, you better have one more heavy-duty shredding machine because they will burn up the cheap ones.

Well this unit was not a total loss. It did contain many good items that I was willing to sell. Collectibles from this unit convinced me that there was good money to be made on eBay. Between the eBay sales and the garage sale, I made a really nice profit. Though I must admit, my hourly wage was significantly lower because it took to much time to burn the magazines.

Coming in the next posting ----- Watch out for the rocks!

Another thing learned at auctions

By watching the regulars, I learned to look at the floor just inside the unit and see how many cut locks were laying there. The units that had the locks cut off of them several times were not worth as much because things of value had usually been taken from the unit.



Units that have packed boxes stacked neatly and compactly into the area are better units than those that are just piled in chaos. Often the piles of chaos means that the owner knew they were going to loose the unit, so they went in and dug through the boxes taking anything that was of value or had a good resale value; or whoever put the stuff in the unit didn't care about anything so often the stuff would be broken.

The Steps to Buying at Storage Unit Auctions #1

Now if you are thinking that you would like to purchase storage units at auction, there are a few pointers you should know. The first thing you need to do is decide how much you are willing to spend at auction. Next, go to a few in your area and find out what the market is. Watch the "regulars" -- those buyers that make all the auctions --figure out what the average range of the bids is. This is important because you don't want to be "suckered in" to bidding more for a unit than you should. The "regulars" don't like new people coming into their turf. I have been at auctions and watched regulars who never paid over $25 for a unit bid against a new person just to get the bid so high there would not be much profit made on the sales of the contents. One example that I remember well was a unit for which the new person paid $110. If the "newby" had been watching the crowd around, he would have seen the regulars snickering as they kept pushing the bid higher.

The First Storage Unit

Curosity began the journey. Courage took the next step. The next auction arrived. I took my $200, prayed the Lord give me wisdom to choose a good unit, and joined the ranks of those seasoned veterans who were looking for merchandise for their stores. There was a small unit that I won with the bid of $70. I was now the proud owner of a storage unit of "stuff." The unit was not totally jam, packed full; but there was enough stuff in it that I couldn't even begin to see what all was in it. I had twenty four hours to clean it out.

I went home and told my husband that I had been "brave" and bought a unit -- just a little one. He asked if I wanted him and his crew to pick it up for me the next day. I told him that I didn't want him to go to all that trouble. I could take our little "baby" truck and get it myself. After all, it was a very small unit and how much could it hold. He convinced me to let him and the crew do the job for me.

The next day I heard the trucks coming in. I looked out and was in for one of the shocks of my life! There were three pickups with their beds overflowing AND a sixteen foot trailer full of stuff. Somehow the little bit of stuff that was in the small storage unit seemed to have multiplied.

We unloaded the stuff into the one bay of our business' shop. What "treasures" we did find. Their were appliances, an antique sewing machine, boxes of clothes that were new with tags, all kinds of household items, toys, and then some plain junk. I allowed my children and our employees to go through the stuff and take what they wanted. One needed a washer. Another needed the dryer. One got a new wardrobe of name brand clothes. After everyone had taken what they wanted, I had a yard sale and sold the rest. The "left overs" of the unit brought in $300.

At that point I was hooked. I knew that money could be made. I began to share with family and friends this new found, part time job. And I tried to share with them what I had learned to that point. And that is a whole other story. . .