Losing Everything.

Most tenants are itinerant; inadvertent, perpetual nomads, moving from one home to the next, living the life kinetic, but with all the restless, roaming energy travels sideways and backwards, seldom does this endless journey progress forwards or upwards.

Some renters do enjoy moving, but these optimists are a rarity. When an assured short-term tenancy (accursed short-stay travesty) usually lasts for just six months (twelve if you're lucky) and is then rolled over if not fully renewed or ended, tenants generally have a maximum of four months in which to breathe before they could face being kicked out with two months notice. This precarious, fractured security is more than simply unsettling. It's also costly, with the regular hiring of vans, storage to find, upfront deposits, the infamous fees to letting agents and rent in advance to find.

Other costs are emotional but they also hit hard over time, especially the cost of replacing lost belongings after yet another move.

Such losses can be accidental. I once mislaid a bag of beloved clothes including a new dressing gown when I moved. To maximise profit and to save me money, the removal firm split their truck space between several people, and stuff was mixed up, irretrievably. I only lost stuff - I did not gain.

It's a distracting messy process, this relocation conveyor belt, no matter how hard you try to be organised. Perhaps worst of all is leaving stuff with friends to be looked after informally, assuming they will respect the value of what you own.

A friend told me how she lost everything (literally - everything) after travelling to the States for a temporary but amazing opportunity. In the meantime, her now former friends moved out and casually left her worldly goods behind, without a care. No insurance, no payback, no possessions and a series if wrecked friendships.

Storage can be expensive for those on no/low pay. Leaving baggage with family or in the attic of stable friends is inherently risky. Some other friends have had property damaged in floods, fire and break-ins.

Nobody escape the curse. The artist Marc Chagall lost all his early work when he left it with a friend in Paris during WW1. His paintings later appeared on the open market...

Like many renters, I operate a triage system for possessions: absolute essentials are taken with me when travelling. Valuables (if only to me) are left in official storage centres - costly, but worth it. I keep possessions to a minimum, but things like precious art works, made by friends are irreplaceable.

Mass made household goods are cheap to acquire, but dear to replace when lost in bulk. Bin bags burst during the move, with explosions of underwear veering across motorways. Soggy cardboard boxes cave in and smash all your crockery onto the pavement. Overburdened suitcases burst.

I've been told, callously to shrug off the loss. It's just 'stuff.' It's only 'things' - nothing more than 'possessions.' But to lose everything you own, including winter clothes or precious photos never stops hurting.

http://rentergirl.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/our-lady-of-banana-boxes.html

Unavoidable Storage Centres

I was packing my worldly goods again, when I noticed a change in the behaviour of those running the booming business of storage centres.

As places go, storage centres have always been extremely odd. Tales of murder victims in freezers, ill-gotten gains and terrorist related items being ‘stored’ are legion. People even hire rooms in storage centres and hide that they are living inside, although I am amazed that it’s cheaper than renting a house. They are often places of quiet desperation, where the detritus of failed relationships is stacked in tea-chests, next to a failing ebay company and some old videos the owner can’t bare to throw away.

Many people, myself included, have noted storage centres, and the role they play in enabling people to hoard possessions when homes are getting smaller. I wandered round the ancient building, fascinated by just a peek into dusty rooms. One held a life-size Mr. Punch, elsewhere there were packing boxes and bicycles, toys, furniture and burst bin bags full of mouldy old clothes.

They are very expensive nowadays. Competition for custom is hotting up. Phoning a storage centre to request a quote is on a par with comparison shopping for insurance, but here the sales people are oily than rather than slick. Try asking for a direct price and they avoid the subject, asking if you are student (“…you sound so young!”) and making a big show of not selling you too much space (so easy to spot) and instead piling on ‘extras.’

Extras? You mean a door is optional, or a ceiling. No: but wait, they are trying to sell you their ‘free’ van. It’s only available if you book really quickly, and then you have to drive it yourself, so if you can’t drive, well need I finish? Not much use really. Beware ‘offers.’ They last for one-two months, after which in the complex language of subterfuge, prices escalate.

Then they call again: they promise to meet the offer of any ‘reasonable rival.’ They are more pushy and duplicitous than the worst estate agent. They call casually once more, surprised then hurt that you’ve used another company where prices are reasonable. The problem is that within the big group of famous companies, no matter what, how fair and reasonable they claim to be, the price eventually offered is exactly the same for all of them. How strange.
Thankfully, I found an established family firm, and by established I mean they’d been keeping things safe in the same warehouse for 150 years. Imagine what they must have seen. I worried what would happen if payment didn’t go through, and joked about a bonfire of my vanities in the delivery bay. They said no: it’s not like that. But we both know they hold a trump card, that is my worldly goods, under a lock with combination known only to them, while I have my own key so they can’t rob my stuff.

Such strange places. Such necessary places, but that hard-sell needs looking at.