Hello, Dolly

I've never rented storage space before (I've always been more of a cram-it-or-can-it guy). But with another baby on the way, we've begun moving some of our things into a storage place on Mission Street.

Going in, my only frame of reference was the storage facility in "Silence of the Lambs," so I was pleasantly surprised by how nice it was.

There's climate control, impressive views and each of the units is "individually alarmed" (that's certainly better than being "collectively alarmed," which would describe Poland in the summer of 1939).

Check out the view from our floor.



I had figured people would just use these places for storing things. But there's a lady with a space near our unit that has an office set up inside (not sure where her power source is coming from).

I was inspired to turn ours into a man cave.



Unfortunately, Kelly kept giving me more boxes and it got a little cramped.



While I was moving in, another guy was camped out in his storage area. He was unpacking stuff from Safeway paper bags while listening to Journey on a tiny boom box.

He said he had to leave his apartment in a hurry because he was offered a $50,000 buyout in order to move out of his rental. (Wow, in this economy?)



He was very excited about how the units were individually alarmed, because he needed to store his 27 guitars and his 30 pounds of silver coins. Question: Is he a musical pirate?

We didn't have anything that valuable (aside from the synthesizer)...but that turns out to be a good thing. When we tried to lock our unit, we didn't actually close the latch. The facility called to inform us of our error a few days later.

Frankly, if a thief agreed to steal our things, we would probably be better off. No storage fees.