Taking Your time: How Self-Storage Can Help After a Bereavement
Dealing with the aftermath of a loved one’s death can be a truly stressful and sad time. Whether it’s been expected, or sudden, it’s a responsibility that no one relishes as they deal with their grief and loss along with making the practical decisions that come from sorting through a lifetime’s belongings.
Using self storage can help during this difficult period. It can facilitate time to make considered decisions about what to do with precious items. It can also provide a space to keep things safely out of sight and mind until whoever is left with the task might feel more prepared to deal with everything, preventing them from making hasty choices which they might later come to regret.
Take Your Time
There can sometimes be a temptation to ‘get it over with’ when the time comes to sort through someone’s personal belongings. Maybe whoever is left with the task finds it too fresh and painful to deal with and wishes to just move on quickly. Perhaps there’s financial pressure to get a property up for sale or rent, maybe there’s a limited window of time available, or it needs to be done by someone who lives overseas or far away. It can all seem so fast and overwhelming.
This is where self-storage can help. While it’s obviously impractical to keep everything, many items can be transferred to a self-storage unit of appropriate size, at an affordable price, until the time is right to make decisions. Keeping everything in a storage unit also means that you can sort as it suits – in small, manageable bursts of time or over a longer dedicated period.
It will also facilitate the storage of items which have been left to someone in a will which need to be collected or claimed, and will act as a safe space to keep everything while family or friends choose items that they wish to keep as keepsakes.
Sorting and Organising a Property
It can feel like a mammoth task, so it might be best to start small. A good first step is to decide what to do with the bigger items such as furniture. Decide whether to scrap, sell, donate or keep for future use – perhaps a member of the family will soon move house or set up their own home – are there any items that can be held safely which will help them out? Or if the property is to be rented, perhaps some – or a lot – of the furnishings can stay in place? Working through a home room-by-room breaks the job down to more manageable proportions. Placing colour-coded post-it notes on items can also help when the job of clearing out begins.
The process of winding down someone’s estate can require paperwork that might not seem important at first glance, but can prove to be essential. A self-storage unit is a great way to keep these documents safely stored until you know for sure if you need them or not. It also allows time to go through all of it thoroughly so that you don’t miss sentimental or historic items that you may wish to keep.
Preparing To Sell or Rent
Self Storage can become a vital tool in preparing a property for sale. This can take a long time after a death, particularly if there’s a long probate process to navigate, so it makes sense not to draw it out any longer than necessary by delaying the physical preparation of the property.
A clean, empty, living space will sell a lot faster than one where someone else’s life and belongings are still in situ. Potential buyers wish to visualise themselves living there, and they also want to get an idea of its full size once the previous owner’s belongings are gone. They can make a decision to buy in the first 7-10 seconds of walking in the door, believe it or not, so it will benefit a seller to present the property as desirably as possible.
Many may choose to rent out the property instead – this can require an even quicker turnaround than a sale, and in both cases, carrying out necessary repairs and re-decoration can help greatly. A clean, fresh coat of paint, some new carpets and a new kitchen can turn a tired space into somewhere desirable to live.
Secure self storage will enable you to declutter the property quickly without having to resort to house clearance, while still giving yourself the space and time to go through everything thoroughly and carefully. In the case of renting, furniture can be stored safely while necessary work is carried out on the property and then the choice can be made to re-use whatever will work for the new tenants or to replace what won’t suit.
A Practical Hub
Winding up an estate can often involve multiple executors, or family members who live in many different locations and are available at separate times. It can be difficult to coordinate and often messy – items or documents are needed at short notice, or they can’t be found, or whoever has them has gone on holidays – all of which can lead to delays and confusion. Using a self-storage unit as a central management hub for the estate can be a practical and efficient way to tackle the process. Multiple keyholders can have access day and night, and the unit can be used to store important documents, legal papers, keys and other necessary items in a central location, thereby lifting the burden of dealing with it all from just one person and placing it in a safe, accessible place to speed and ease the process.
The property will also require a level of maintenance while it’s unoccupied – keep things like cleaning materials, a lawnmower and gardening tools in a central unit and in that way the task can be shared among a few people when they have time to do it.
Keepsakes, Memories and History
Some items will hold only financial significance for those left behind. However more will have sentimental importance and self-storage is a great way of keeping these secure and accessible.
Photographs, jewellery, artworks, heirlooms – a self storage unit is the perfect space to keep these until you’re ready to make decisions as to what to do with them – whether to pass them on to family members, keep them to revisit time and again or preserve them for future generations.
Many items can be important to a family’s history – christening robes for example, documents relating to a family tree, sets of china or silverware – every single family has these significant items which can be preserved and passed down from generation to generation. A self-storage unit can be an ideal for these – many are temperature-controlled and as such can be more suited for keeping delicate items such as fabrics and documents than an attic or shed.
They also mean that you can rest assured that if you’re the keeper of the family treasure, it won’t all disappear if there’s a fire, a flood or a robbery.
A Safe Sanctuary
The therapeutic benefits of using self-storage cannot be underestimated. The gift of time to sort through everything can be a valuable healing tool and eliminate the distressing need to make hasty decisions which you may come to regret in future.
Your self-storage unit can also become a sanctuary to reflect on a loved one’s life, or mourn their loss surrounded by precious reminders and keepsakes from their lives. The sale of a family home, for example, can be an additional stress after the bereavement of a parent, for example. Using a self-storage unit can be a helpful way to process the different sort of grief that saying goodbye to your own childhood and upbringing can bring. Having those familiar childhood things accessible and safe, but not as constant reminders, can bring huge solace at a distressing time.
Unlock the freedom of extra space. Get in touch with Storage World today or get a quote online.
