We’ve had storage containers on our property for the better part of 3 years.  In them are all the furniture and furnishings that would not fit in our rental house, or the old house that we tore down.

We decided to go with roll-off containers, rather than renting a storage space, because it is much cheaper.  A typical 20×10 storage space costs about $350 per month.  We had 2 26′ x 8′ storage roll-offs, and a shorter 13′ x 8′ one for house materials, for about $300/mo.  The equivalent storage space off-site would have cost us about $900.

The downside is that we had to move them three times.  They started in the front of our house, then were moved to the side.  From the side, they went to the back north-west corner of our property.  When we started on our pool house, we had to move them a third time, to the north-east corner. Each move meant dropping new boxes, and moving all the contents from the old boxed to the new ones.

Getting rid of them proved quite a challenge.  In order to proceed with our back retaining wall, we had to dig away the access ramp that we had used to put in the roll-offs, and the office trailer.  When we were finally able to reconstruct the ramp, we had a large trench in our driveway, waiting for the plumbers to connect the water and gas lines.  Finally, last Friday we were able to fill the trench and bring in the truck to remove the containers.

Now you see them, now you don’t

All the furniture and furnishings are now in our basement, waiting for the house to be done.  The office trailer gets moved out in 10 days.