'It's no good,' I said to my girlfriend on the phone as I stood looking into my garage one morning, 'I'm going to have to find some self storage, Bromley preferably, to get this lot out of here. There's no where to tidy it to'.
'Just launch it!' she retorted. 'Throw it away! It's a load of old rubbish!'
I winced. How on earth could she expect me to just bin all of this? It may be a heap of old posters, a couple of guitars with strings missing and some clothes which may or may not still fit some part of me, but it represented my coming of age; these belongings I treasured as a kid, and they deserved better than the bin.
Besides, a lot of the bits and pieces in various bags and boxes were probably worth something, I just didn't have the inclination to sift through them right now.
'I'm going to put them into self storage. Bromley has got one; I've driven past it enough times.' I told her, purposefully ignoring her unhelpful suggestions.
My dad helped out with moving my stuff, which we realised was going to take two car journeys to shift, until we took up on the great free van hire offered by the self storage centre.
My dad actually worked in self storage in Bromley, but retired before the recession hit. He sees it as a bit of a symbol for the greedy kind of culture that got us into the recession in the first place. 'People kept on buying more and more stuff because they could get credit whenever they wanted for what ever they wanted,' he said as we drove up to the storage unit.
'Now though, everyone's putting it into storage when they are forced to downsize, so these guys are doing good business.'
So I lovingly placed my belongings safe into storage until I could figure out what parts of it my girlfriend would let me keep, and what I'd need to throw away for good.
It does seem like a good idea, I mean, who hasn't wished they could have lots of extra space to house their stuff? My reason for my clearout was that my girlfriend has just moved in, and we kind of need the spare room, where all this stuff was.
It's not surprising really that there are around 750 of these types of storage sites around Britain as we've got some of the smallest houses in Europe. I'm surprised some people don't just move into these places (this isn't allowed, of course).
Thomas Pretty is a horder who recently took great delight in using his local self storage centre. Find out more about self storage Bromley at http://www.safestore.co.uk/storage/london/orpington/orpington/map_directions.aspx
