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Something my daughter taught me which was really really cool was to take digital pictures of storage areas. Basically open up the drawer, make nearly everything visible, take a picture then add it to Evernote (or some git repo, or some well known folder). Then when you are wondering what you have/where it is you can scan through the pictures. It is remarkably effective.

Smart daughter!

Simple, but clever idea. I keep telling my wife our house is for people to live in, not a warehouse for her books, memorabilia and kids toys. I'll try anything to keep our house livable.

not a warehouse for her books, memorabilia and kids toys

Isn't that what "living" means?

Some people hoard these things to a degree which is completely out of hand.

Acquiring material possessions and forming emotional attachments to them? No, that is not what living means.

Move to an apartment in the city, toss what you can't bring. Worked wonders for me.

Random startup idea, just for fun: have mechanical turk (or a game) to tag the items in the photo.

Upload your photos: shed-shelf1.png shed-shelf2.png shed-main.png

After a few hours (or days) they are tagged with hammer, wheelbarrow, drill, gas can, etc.

Now you can grep for things in the real world :).

(This is likely overkill, but I like the idea of photos taking advantage of our massively-parallel object-finding & recognition abilities. With a few textual tags, even at the entire-photo level, you could search dozens of rooms efficiently.)

Why not automated fully, by using some AI/image classification system, which I am sure by the current state of advances, can do some wonders in recognizing objects in a photograph. Maybe not all, but having maybe 80% classified, is still an advance. Maybe as an Android app?

Or you could just tag everything with RFID.

Like the searchable storage in Makers.

I really, really want this to exist. And then on top of that, I could train a spam filter to recognize stuff I will never use again.

Funny, that was how my insurance agent told me to catalog what I had, video was best. Considering how many CDs I still have, first day adopter, DVDs, Blu-Rays, and even boxed games, it was easier to get it in picture form than inventory it any other means. Great way to keep serial numbers. Now all I need is something that scan photos for serial and model numbers and file them.

Same went for the china and other high ticket items, oh get pics of both sides of china and similar items.

For the scanning of photos and serial numbers, you could use mechanical turk.

I suspect the total cost of your warehouse space would exceed what you're willing to pay for this service. I mean, self-storage companies charge a lot, and they don't even catalogue your crap for you. Plus shipping costs, labour, etc.

It's completely impractical, sadly.

I want it too.

I used to manage a storgae, actually two. They were all huge rip offs. I only met a handful of people who used them correctly; move in and move out within a month. 99.9% of people move their crap(sorry, but unless it silver, or gold bullion) in and leave it their forever. The owners know this and exploit the psychological phenomenon. Plus, they actually love late fees. There was a difference between what men and women horder. If you are close to homeless, and still have a car a small storage unit does made sense though. Get the smallest unit available--closet size--and use it to store clothes and food, and personal effects. Make sure to keep your automobile--preferably a inconspicuous van--like a VW newer bus, or anything that dosen't stand out as looking like you sleep in it. One very ingenious young an converted a small moving truck into an apartment. He parked in the commercial areas and lived that way for years. He never told anyone though. People can be really petty--and beyond mean. God bless anyone who is contemplating using a Storage Facility.

1. I was living abroad for a year. It cost significantly less to store everything than re-buy it.

2. In the bay area, people often have a small living area. Storage is significantly cheaper than a larger apartment. Can you learn to live minimally? Sure. Is it always the preferable choice? If I hadn't found the place I did, I may have rented a 5x5 semi-permanently.

I've definitely considered living out of a truck. How did the guy shower?

cheapest gym membership in your area.

Storage is good for someone who is between apartments for whatever reason. I used it for when I moved across the country, and didn't have a permanent residence for several months, I was staying with friends and family.

Also good for college kids who go abroad, home for summer, co-op, etc...

Self storage often has to be in prime real estate locations(commercial next to an intersection). Amazon can put a warehouse in Iowa and save a ton on physical infrastructure. That said, there are those pods things, but something tells me those are a rip-off.

PODS are expensive to drop off, pick up, and keep on the street (roughly $75 pick up/drop off and $50/day in Los Angeles). After that it's the same as storage places or slightly cheaper. I looked into it a year ago and decided against it.

Self-storage facilities have to be located in places where people can get to them though. If you're shipping stuff there, it could be further away/on cheaper land.

Sounds similar to BoxBee[1], although they don't photograph & inventory, they just catalog & store individual boxes and make them available on demand.

https://boxbee.com/

There are services where you can drop off eligible items, and they will research them, photograph them, post them to eBay, and ship them. This wouldn't handle the temporary-storage model, but they do handle everything related to selling.

They are nice in that you can just drop stuff off, never see it again, and sometimes get a check in th email. But the downside is that after fees and percentages, you see about 50-60% of what the item sells for. So it's good for boxes of old stuff that have some value, but that you know you'll never break down and sell individually.

This sounds like a potentially very useful service. The one downside is that objects with a value below a certain threshold will not be worth their time, and would likely just be moved to a landfill.

Out of personal interest (as a potential user): can you name some of these businesses?

The one I know of, in the Chicagoland area, is "iSold It on eBay." I believe it is a franchise with a bunch of locations.

They have certain categories of things they will try to sell, and things they won't bother with. If it sells, they can mail you a check. If not, you can pick it up, or they can donate it to charity.

They may accept things to sell by mail, but then of course you're taking a further hit on shipping.

I've walked into one of these in Chicago - not sure if it's that exact one. I recall the fee being something like 40% of the item...

Considering they do pretty much all the work for you, that doesn't sound too bad.

Those popped up in 2009 and then disappeared when nobody used them...

Sounds like you want MakeSpace: https://www.makespace.com/.

(Discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6453732)

I use wire storage racks and cheap $10 transparent plastic drawers to store and organize my stuff, not counting clothing where i use dressers and closets and just plain plastic boxes for bedding . It's fairly affordable and effective. everything being transparent that isn't clothing is fairly essential for finding things.

If you haven't seen it, a link I think worthy of a listen, George Carlin Talks About "Stuff":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

If you're buying stuff you already own, you may want to reassess some priorities.

It's stuff that 8ig8 doesn't know is already on hand. Keeping certain track of it takes more time than the repurchase is worth, for occasional use. A related situation is why lots of people have several identical pairs of scissors, can openers, and other things that they don't use every day: eventually, as you buy more of them, the time it takes to find one costs less than buying a new one. But 8ig8 has this problem with things that are hidden in the attic; just figuring out whether it is in there at all is painful.

Ironically, this is exacerbated right after you move, too: I have things which I know I own (diagonal cutters, magnetized screwdrivers, etc), but which I _cannot_ find anywhere. It's in some box somewhere in my garage, but not in my "tools" chest, so it's more time effective to buy a replacement.

How many pens do you have?

So it sounds like the problem isn't actually storage, but cataloguing and retrieval? This might make more sense as an in-house service somehow, rather than something that involves shipping and the associated costs.

It sounds like the problem is owning too much stuff.

Well, sure, that's the problem, but breaking it down into separate steps that need to be solved should be part of the solution.

I own too much stuff. I would love for there to be a solution more effective and less wasteful than simply throwing it out. I appreciate this post because it's suggesting at least part of a solution...

...although I don't think it would work for me because it requires even more stuff. A working printer (which will inevitably turn into a non-working printer). Label paper. Packing tape. Many boxes of appropriate sizes.

I assume this guy already ships stuff from his house for other reasons, or else all that stuff would be clutter too.

Buy fewer things!

> I also have small random, rarely-used things that I know I'll need in the future, but don't know where to store them so I'll find them in the future.

As a guy who personally sleeps on the floor, owns one pair of pants, rents a family car and a family bedroom, and has no photographs or books, I'm genuinely curious - what are some of things that need to be stored?

A jacket would be an example. Depending on where you live, it's something completely unnecessary in the summer and totally necessary in the winter.

On the flip side, swimming trucks for the opposite seasons.

I've used storage for skis, kayaks and other outdoor kit before.

Someday we'll have robots that can keep track of it all and how much its currently worth online. Imagine being able to find things with a simple query.

And if most people did this and shared their data, you might be able to find something a hundred feet away much more quickly.

Regarding your idea about the „personal Amazon attic“ which you show to your friends, I wanted to let you know that we are currently working on something very similar.

ShelfFlip (www.shelfFlip.com) makes it very easy to create a list of all your products (by analyzing your received order confirmations or your amazon purchase history) and then lets you put selected products on your personal sales page (your “shelf” - which you can then send to your friends).

I am very curious what you think about it.

I have a whole bunch of car parts sitting around that I wish I had the time to properly photograph, sell and ship. I would totally be for splitting the costs if I can just get them out of my garage.

This is a scenario where I know the parts are worth $$$ but I'm time constrained to get it sold. Plus car parts cost $$ to ship.

Craigslist?

Meh. Takes too long. Plus the parts are to a fairly rare car so the market is not large.

Boxit does something similar: http://www.boxitnow.ca/

There are some guys in Singapore that are working on something similar:

www.vaultdragon.com

I think that exists. May have even been a YC company; definitely a fairly new startup. Can't recall its name though; something with "box" in it perhaps. Anyone have a better memory than mysef?

No, that service that you're thinking of is nothing like it. I know because I want the exact same service 8ig8 is talking about and was hopeful that it was, but it's not even close.

(I also can't remember the name.)

This one? "Why 3 MIT Grads Want to Send You an Empty Box" http://www.wired.com/business/2013/05/one-click-selling/

Definitely not what 8ig8 described, but the first thing that I associate with "box".

Yes, that one. And exactly, it's profoundly disappointing.

That's the one I was thinking of; thanks for finding.

Wait a minute.

I hired you to be movers years ago. I just now realized what your HN handle was. Incredible.

Boxbee and MakeSpace are both new companies going for something like that.

From http://yclist.com/ - Swapbox? BufferBox?

This has potential, have you ever seriously thought of the logistics?

That is kind of what Lauritz.com does.