Self-Storage: An Urban Tale

In my growing up years, putting something in storage meant taking it out to a barn or a chicken house. (Most things never came back out, which is just as well. I can conjure up the dust now, 40 years later.) My experience with commercial storage was limited to taking wool coats to a cleaners for seasonal storage. I stopped that during college. And then I went a long, long time before I needed to seek out a storage place other than my attic or garage. That time was last week.

My inexperience was obvious. I had to ask elementary questions like, "what kind of items need to go into climate controlled storage?" It finally wasn't the temperature factor that made me select two inside units, it was the agent's explanation that anything in an outside unit ends up collecting a lot more dust. More than your garage at home. Well, there's that dust issue again.

After a round of Internet comparison shopping, I visited a single self-storage facility and latched on to two small units with "first month free" rather than a large, full-priced unit. Did I visit the facility that looked like the best deal (from the Internet)? Nope. I went to the one that is most convenient to our grocery store and dog park. Familiar path and maybe an efficient path.

And what did I learn? To get two locks (for two units) that use the same key. And to label boxes with boring codes. You see, the manager once lost some valuable items in a storage facility because she carefully printed "Antiques" on selected boxes. Those were the only boxes the thieves took. (At a far-away facility, not mine, of course.)

The self-storage business is down a little due to the economy but holding its own as people preserve their house stuffs even if they are between houses. Baby boomers will help this industry in the next few years as retirement and relocation decisions increase in number.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://www.boldproductions.com/, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Where would you live if...

Even though our mobile society is not so mobile anymore, retirees are. And the leading boomers who officially retire in 2011 (if they're not already out of their jobs due to lay-offs) will make us all look mobile even if only a fraction of them start traveling or moving. They will also talk about it more than most people do....

So, the #1 question becomes, Where would you live if you could live anywhere? Some typical answers are back home, where family is, and where it's warm.

Tom Bold and I chose the climate route with a sub-answer of where it's warm on the way to where family is. But there's another sub-answer and Tom gets credit for articulating it.

"You know, we've always had two priorities for neighborhood. We sure don't, now."

Those priorities were quality of schools (that affected one of our home purchases) and length of the commute to work (that affected all of our home purchases, four of them). Now? Except for a very slight interest in resale value, and I'll emphasize slight, we don't much care about the schools. The commute to work is even less of a consideration. Commuting now centers on Internet access, not road access.

One commute is of interest: number of minutes it takes to reach an off-leash dog park. Happily, with 18 dog parks, the greater Las Vegas area can be called dog-friendly.

What drives us, then, toward a neighborhood choice? So far, it's what is missing that calls to us: sidewalks. The best morning walks with a dog happen off pavement. So, it's just possible that the house hunting will be defined by concrete.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://www.boldproductions.com/, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Looking for Neighborhoods

Visiting a potential next community means learning about neighborhoods as much as looking at houses. So, when a realtor says, you don't want to live over there... well, that's where you end up at the end of the day.

As I drove through that not-recommended neighborhood of Las Vegas, I found myself saying, How bad can it be? There's an Olive Garden.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://www.boldproductions.com/, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.

Retirement Flexibility: Every day is like...

Lots of retirees say, "every day is like every other day" to describe availability for, well, just about everything.

Today, Tom Bold and I reached one of those days. We left home on a trip to look at a possible relocation city to escape wintry weather. And we ran into wintry weather.

It took only a few minutes to pull out the map and re-route our travel along a warmer route. (Same destination but different driving hours, to be sure.)

What did we learn?

First, we were able to re-route without a concern because we could easily (easily!) reschedule our activites. No "must-be-back" worries (as long as I reserve 2/3 of the day to maintain my work schedule, combining on-the-road computing with in-the-hotel computing).

Second, the events of the day underscored our purpose. Escaping wintry weather.

© 2010 Mary Bold, PhD, CFLE. The content of this blog or related web sites created by Mary Bold (http://www.marybold.com/, http://www.boldproductions.com/, College Intern Blog) is not under any circumstances to be regarded as professional, legal, financial, or medical advice. Or education advice. Or marital advice. Or even a tip.