My last post was all the way back in May and I said I would investigate a storage unit.

Well in June I pulled the trigger on that and got a little 3 x 3 unit at a new facility which had opened up just up the road.

It’s a 5 minute drive from the house and also on the way home from the day job without really requiring and time lost in a detour.

Did I mention there’s 3 Op Shops within a 2 minute drive? It’s a good spot.

As an added bonus due to the new opening and trying to attract tenants the first two months were at half price so this became a very good deal.

I can’t explain the sense of relief of getting all of the stuff out of the spare room and at various points around the house and out of the back shed and collate everything into one spot. The house now is the house and functions as it should. I know for sure that my wife appreciates the disappearance of clutter.

It was necessary with bubbas arrival I just didn’t realise just how much.

I can fully seperate eBay and home life (physically anyway) and there’s some great mental peace from being able to come home after being at the storage unit and just focus on family time.

It quickly became apparent after a few weeks of moving in there that potentially I needed even more space. The way I had it set up it was functioning okay but I found myself constantly shifting boxes around and around and around to try and either fit sourced items into the unit or to find stuff to pack to ship. It quickly became frustrating and my brain which loves patterns was screaming at me that this wasn’t working efficiently or effectively.

So two months later at the beginning of August I upgraded to a new 7 x 3 unit right on the corner tucked out of the way with an odd shape of a rectangle which then tapered down to a point making a small triangle (see photo below). I was able to set the small triangle area up as the workspace for taking photos and packing stuff and as soon as I had done this I already knew that it was gonna work quite well. Luckily for me, the facility was still running the startup promotion and by upgrading I was able to get an additional two months at half the price again making a total of four months half price in a single year. I’m assuming this probably isn’t supposed to happen but I will take it nonetheless.

The extra space made all the difference. I was able to segregate box’s into their own little areas by type.

I was able to setup a dedicated spot for packing materials and a workstation. (See below). This area will be custom built out over the next year with some assistance. More on that later.

Note the use of the lights. They run on batteries as power is only down the hall and available during office hours which is a bit restrictive for use. These little lights do the job for now.

Over the next couple months I spent a decent amount of money on inventory and preparation for a big Q4 including my largest lump sum purchase of some 300 Japanese manga books.

And although I had all my listed items stacked in boxes that were fairly easy to access I found that the death pile was slowly creeping across the floor and had serious potential to quickly get out of hand. I decided at the same time I brought the books that I needed to make the investment for the future now and finally get some racking. Like a shark I was going to grow to fit into the surrounding environment, might as well have some good structure to it.

I was able to find a few local deals on both Facebook marketplace and gumtree for racking. It became a question of whether I wanted to go for heavy duty warehouse type setup or a simple Bunnings type set up. In the end I decided to go for the Bunnings type setup with the caveat that I wasn’t going to pay Bunnings prices.

I had seen several racks in the past that people wanted to get rid of on Marketplace and Gumtree so knew would only be a matter of time before I could find a good deal in my area that would suit.

In a cruel twist of fate the following day after deciding this I actually went into the local Bunnings and they had a rack fully put together on clearance for less than half price. Brilliant I thought, this is meant to be it’s a sign, I went to the counter and asked about the rack and was told that I had missed it by mere minutes.

Later that night I ended up searching on Facebook marketplace and came across a business which was closing down nearby and managed to buy 4 racks at $80 each. This later turned into 6 racks after a person had bought 2 from the same person but later did not show up. I took the Ute and a rubber mallet (essential) and dismantled and then reassembled all on the same afternoon. This took longer than I had anticipated even with the rubber mallet making swift work of disassemble/ reassemble.

Everything is now on racks with plenty of room to spare.

The death pile has turned into a death rack. And in it’s highly different form instantly provided some motivation to get stuff listed. For me, something about seeing what’s in front of you versus what’s on the floor and hiding under things in bags and boxes that are basically out of sight out of mind was a strong motivator.

There’s still a long way to go with this setup but the bones are there now. It turns out I have a connection that can help me get further new racking at a deep discount to retail. Next on the list will be a dedicated packing station.

There’s still some vertical space that requires some careful planning and design. Slow moving and fairly light items like games and puzzles would be perfect to tuck away up high. For now these reside in a new spot on the top shelf.

Things have changed a lot in only a few short months and at times it’s often felt like I’m not seeing the growth I was hoping for.

It took me a while to see that expansion of infrastructure is also growth and a necessary precursor to sustained long term growth which is where the medium term goal is. There is also a time component to achieve this which must be spent at some point.

If you haven’t already, maybe it’s time to think about a storage unit?