After we sold out house, we packed up 90% of our belongings and moved in with my parents while we looked for our forever home. Why do it this way? The market was so hot, we needed to be able to make non-contingent offers on prospective homes. Since we did not have an end date in mind or a time frame for living in limbo (although we expected 2-3 months), we put most of our home and belongings into storage that we would not be able to access until we found and closed on a new home.

9 months later…we had learned a lot.

First, we used a company called Red Rover, which is like PODS, but cheaper because you pick the containers up yourself and deliver them back to the yard. We LOVED this until they went out of business 2 months into our storage time frame. Luckily, Pack Rat purchased the company and maintained our containers, delivered them on time, and nothing was lost or damaged. I definitely recommend this method if you are looking at an indefinite amount of time in which to store your stuff as it cuts out moving items twice (into and out of a stationary storage facility). A few things to consider however:

Cons:

• these units are not temperature controlled, so you can’t store wine or other heat sensitive items (all my cricut vinyl was no longer usable)

• because they were so hot, clothing and bedding items we stored in plastic bins definitely smelled like plastic and needed washing upon move-in, even though I washed them all prior to placing them in storage. These moving bags DID NOT make my clothes smell, and the zippers did not break, so I highly recommend them.

• You cannot access your items. This meant Halloween and Christmas went by without me being able to get items I would have liked to have. I had to purchase some items that I would not have needed to buy had we moved in sooner (bike helmets, scooters, winter coats). I probably could have just planned better and kept these items out.

Pros:

• We didn’t have to move everything into and out of an off-site storage facility

• unloading was super convient compared to a moving van because the conatiners are at ground level

• I learned what it was like to live with less stuff and that was very freeing

Finally, I want to stress how impactful living without MOST of our items was for our family. We had fewer clothes, toys, shoes, and personal items. We moved in to an already packed home at my parent’s, and had to keep things to a minimum. We quickly learned that we didn’t miss most items, and when we unpacked out containers in our new house 9 months after saying goodbye to them, A LOT went straight to donation. We didn’t even remember we had half of the items we came across. We are more mindful with what we keep and buy now as we had truly learned to live with less and it gave us more time for adventures and time spent together, rather than caring for our stuff.