Cleaning Out a Storage Unit
Spring Cleaning
Congratulations storage auction winner – you have acquired this huge box of goods ready for pilfering, reusing, recycling and selling off.
The downside is that people don’t keep their local storage units in the most amazing condition, over time they have come to represent a rather sorry state with scraps of rubbish on the floor here and there and for the few items of treasure in the unit, there will be far more objects which could only be described as rather useless to anybody. OK, it’s not like somebody is going to want to make storage unit near them looking perfect as if they are going to live there but you might have had higher hopes about how easy it was going to be to clear this volume of stuff out. And to make it worse, the storage company are breathing down your neck to clear this stuff out within the next day or two as their sights are on getting this unit open for a new customer, otherwise they will probably won’t too keen on you having you bidding on other units.
Cleaning out a storage unit isn’t a one man job, get some of the family along to help. They will at least find the job a curious one and have a fresh perspective on the items you have won. Delegate, and you might have a depressingly massive pile of boxes weedled down to the essentials in a fraction of the time. In fact, probably best when you get your viewing of the unit prior to auction to assess if you can realistically break down and clear everything out in a short space time. Are the small numbers of valuables worth the effort of disposing of rotting sofas and boxes of accounts? If you have won more than unit, you will really need to get cracking on this task and get a good strong team together.
Having done this assessment and put down the winning bid, you are going to have to get to work in a big way. As you and your colleagues/friends/family are going through the items, get everything that is or may be valuable safe to one side. This includes not only obvious valuables, but things that might go for a few pounds on ebay, such as CDs, DVDs, houseware, books and so on. Anything that is metallic or electronic can be sold for scrap, if you feel that the items have seen better days. In terms of sellable items you may already be getting ideas at this stage about how to pitch your sales of these objects, perhaps a bulk sale of a complete collection of books by a certain author might be a more tempting prospect to a buyer than individual volumes.
And then you are left with the items that deemed presumably worthless. There may be some items that could be good charity shop fare – clothes, tatty books, games and toys – and you may be able to justify some tax relief by making such donations. Otherwise anything that is truly worn out, ghastly or completely useless will need to be taken to the recycling centre or worst case to the rubbish dump.
Good luck in your auctions and hope you gain some quick wins.
Posted in: Auctions