By the time I sold my ninth storage unit, I realized I might have a problem.

By the time I sold my ninth storage unit, I realized I might have a problem.<br><br>I started by bidding for a storage unit that had been abandoned. It was crazy expensive, but I didn’t know that. I’d never done that before. The two units I’d bought were because the people paying rent on them had passed away, or one had simply sold it to me because he wasn’t in the country. I was just lucky. They were full of antiques, despite the fact that they hadn’t been touched in decades. I had often read online about how one could buy a unit full of junk from an auction and find something of great value inside, but I’d never thought it would happen to me. My luck dissipated after that. The storage units I continued to acquire were either devoid of anything of worth, or they had no redeeming value at all. This was the case with most of the units I bought. They were full of old clothes, nursery furniture, sporting goods or boxes. The first unit I sold from the auction was full of boxes. I don’t know why someone would pay for storage monthly for boxes, but they did, and I didn’t want to keep it anymore. <br><br>This is where I screwed up. <br><br>When you buy a storage unit, you get everything in it. It’s not like what I’d seen in reality TV shows where things were separated and auctioned off one by one. In reality, you bought the whole unit. I’d taken inventory of it, and when I sold it to a local antique shop, I told them everything that was in it. It was a unit I’d bought from a man who was moving to another state. He didn’t want to deal with it anymore, despite the fact that it was full of antique furniture.<br><br>I expected him to walk away from the transaction, happy that he didn’t have to deal with it anymore, and that was the end of it. It wasn’t the end of it. He called me daily after the sale, asking me about his clothes. He was telling me that he didn’t want to sell his clothes, and that he’d been told that the unit was sold fully furnished with nothing missing. I explained that I had told the buyer that there were boxes of clothes in it, but he was fixated on the fact that I had told him that he got everything and he was missing his clothes. I only knew that they were clothes. They were in boxes labeled “women’s clothes”. I knew for a fact that he was a man, and his wife had died three years before. I knew these things because he told me them. I had no idea why he had his dead wife’s clothes in storage, and I didn’t ask him about it. I was simply trying to buy the unit from him. I tried to explain that to him, but it didn’t seem like he was retaining the information. Despite the fact that I’d told him about the clothes, he told me that he’d never been told about the clothes in the unit, and that I’d lied to him. He was angry enough that he was threatening to go to the police. I had no idea what they were going to do with the information that he’d been told that there were boxes of clothes in the storage that he’d sold to me, but I knew that I had done nothing wrong. I was starting to worry about his sanity.<br><br>The man had called me five times in the last three hours. I was in the middle of moving my daughter to her new dorm, and I couldn’t answer his call. I tried to call him back when I had a spare minute, but he didn’t answer. I left a voicemail, but he didn’t call back. I was starting to feel a little spooked. It wasn’t like I’d done anything wrong. It was just that he was fixated on wanting his “stuff” back. I had no idea what his “stuff” was. I could have offered to give him the boxes, but he was starting to scare me. I really didn’t want to talk to him anymore.<br><br>I had never been to a storage auction, and I never would again. It was a waste of time and money. The units were not as valuable as they were portrayed to be on reality TV. You could still buy them from people who were moving, and you would get a much better deal without all the hassle. I thought that by bidding on the unit, I was somehow getting a better deal, but it was all a lie. I’d still spent hours at the storage facility. Hours that I could never get back. <br><br>I had no idea what the man at the auction thought he’d gotten from the unit he’d bought. He was just as stupid as I was, because he’d bid much higher than he needed to. I’d stopped bidding when I realized that he was going to get it, and he could have stopped bidding at any time, but he didn’t. He was going to end up with a unit full of worthless junk, and I had a unit full of worthless junk.<br><br>I’d learned my lesson. I was going to go back to buying units from people. I was going to buy from people who knew what was in the unit, and they knew what they wanted. It was simpler that way, and I could retain some semblance of sanity. I didn’t have time for these auctions. I didn’t have time for men who wanted their dead wife’s clothes. I was going to go back to business as usual. No more of these stupid auctions. I had better things to do.