For reasons that I do not want to go into right now I have been the long-term custodian of lots of stuff that is not mine: other people’s stuff. By long-term I mean 15 years or more. Some of the people who acquired this stuff in the first place have never attempted to reclaim it, or to sort through it once it was boxed up.

Some of it has been boxed up, unopened, for more than a decade. Some of it came to me in the most disorganized fashion, spilling out of binbags, where it remained for years. It was made more manageable, more stackable, by me. I bought storage boxes and gaffer tape and spent whole days arranging other people’s things. The boxes were small cardboard ones, about the size of a wine box. Let me be more specific. I only have to glance to my left to read the dimensions from one of the 200 or more that have passed through my hands in the last 10 years: H350 W250 D250 (Height 350mm, Width 250mm, Depth 250mm, I guess). These storage boxes can stack neatly, 8 or 10 high, as long as they are filled correctly. You learn how to arrange books, DVDs, VHS cassettes, tapes and vinyl LPs so that they can stack safely.

Much of this stuff was in a storage unit, which I paid for, for over a decade. I could justify the cost of the unit, about £180 per month, for the first year or so. It enabled me to clear most of the clutter out of the house that I was selling. The house was much more presentable and easier to maintain for viewings. I believed that it would have sold for less if it had still been filled with clutter. That’s what justified the cost of the storage unit.

Unfortunately what started as a temporary measure became a medium-term thing, and then some. I am no longer paying for a storage unit, but I did for much of the last 15 years. That initial £180 per month grew to over £350 per month. The cost doubled in under 8 years. This means that there has been a quantifiable cost, to me, for taking care of other people’s stuff: well over £40,000, net. I try not to think about it, about how much I had to earn (before tax) to cover that expense. I hoped that things would work out better. I hoped that the person who caused most of this expense would either reclaim his possessions or reimburse me. Preferably both.

Will it surprise you to find that neither of these things has happened? I have, at least, been given the go-ahead to sell whatever I can, and dump the rest.  Well, thanks a bunch. I could have dumped it in 2010 and saved myself a hefty 5-figure sum. And this whole process has just taken up more of my time, created more effort and more uncertainty. The resale value of all this stuff has been less than a quarter of the storage costs that I have incurred. I know because I have spent much of the last year trying to offload it. If it had been stored properly before it became my responsibility it might have been worth a bit more. But the vinyl collection that was stored in binbags in a shed before being boxed up and stacked neatly, by me, had lost much of its resale value. Damp stains, mould, warping. The terms “as new” and even “vgc” did not apply to most of the records.

And all of this has made me think, clearly and repeatedly, about how much it costs to acquire things, and how little value there is in the things that we have acquired. A storage box full of CDs, 150 or more, acquired between 1990 and 2000, would have cost you in excess of £2,000. Its resale value in 2024, if you’re lucky, will be 10% of that. If you can get anything more than £200 for a storage box full of CDs, let me know how and where.

I now have a wider knowledge of second hand music shops than I ever wanted. They will pick what they think they can sell and offer on average less than £3 per CD. You might get rid of half of them. The rest of them you will take to a charity shop. If they accept them, they will sell them for £1 each. But they might not even accept them.

DVDs have even less value. A storage box full of DVDs bought in in the first 10 years or so of their availability (1999 to 2009, say) will have cost you between £2,000 and £3,000. Their resale value is nowhere near 10% of that sum. Again, if a charity shop will accept them they will be sold for £1 each.

It’s probably worth pointing out that there wasn’t a single book, CD, DVD or vinyl record that I wanted to own. I did not covet any of these possessions. I did not want them in my life. I had my own copies of some of them (the books in particular) and did not want duplicates.

A year ago I was still the custodian of over 50 storage boxes full someone else’s stuff : books, CDs, DVDs, vinyl, all bought new. Each of those boxes had cost at least £1,000 to fill, rising to £3,000 in some cases, maybe even more. Perhaps as much as £100,000 spent on stuff. Resale value in 2024: nowhere near £10,000. And if you were paying for my time (even at the rate of the UK minimum wage), and for storage boxes and gaffer tape, the resale value was zero. And did I mention the cost of the storage unit?

I’ll leave you with some advice. I’m not sure whether I would have followed in in 2009 if someone had offered it to me, but here goes: do not spend your time and your money taking care of other people’s stuff. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?