Ten self storage anecdotes

We want to build up a good collection of storage anecdotes, so please add your own through the Comment Box (“Leave a Reply”) at the foot of the page. Here are ten to kick off with. Later we can restructure the anecdotes under various topics, using the best of your submissions.

Sound proof

In his Sunday Times article “Self-storage units: not just anonymous lock-ups” (21 November 2009), Damian Whitworth reported that a Safestore customer uses his unit most days to play his piano ‒ because his wife cannot stand the sound of him playing at home.

Xtreme collecting: newspapers and magazines

There is something about newspapers and magazines that makes them hard to throw out, at least for some people ‒ perhaps the banks of information stored within them? One storage manager reports three exceptional cases. One client filled an entire 160-square-foot storage unit with comics. Undoubtedly there were some treasures among them ‒ collectors’ items. Not so in the case of another client who just could not throw away newspapers, and kept every one he had ever read, it seems, filling an 80-square-foot unit, which then had to be cleared on his death. A bonanza day for the local recycling facility! Another client filled his unit with porn magazines from the 1970s ‒ a private obsession perhaps best kept out of the home. Nothing illegal here ‒ and little of any value, or even of interest (cast your mind back to the 1970s, boys!)

1001 Nikes

In August 2008, a Chinese illegal immigrant in London was given a three-year sentence for importing and distributing fake Nike and Y-3 trainers. Investigators found his hoard stashed away in self storage units in Hertfordshire, Berkshire, Middlesex and London ‒ a total of 17,000 boxed pairs.

The most cost-effective advertising

A new self storage company put up a notice in a village post office in Hamble, Hampshire, advertising their 170 lockers, suitable for boat owners. The advert cost 50p, but it was so successful that the company had to expand to meet demand, and by 2008 had netted business worth £250,000 a year. This extraordinarily cost-effective promotion campaign was only brought to an end when the post office was closed down. Moral: expensive advertising solutions are not always the best!

Rotten money

In March 2010, a trial at Southwark Crown Court convicted a gang of drug smugglers who had used a number of lock-ups in and around South London to store colossal quantities of “skunk” cannabis. But what really caught the attention of the press was the £60,000 in bundles of £20, which ‒ such was their great wealth ‒ the villains had neglected and allowed to rot irreparably in the damp conditions.

A body of evidence

Bodies, and body parts, are often found in self storage units in fiction ‒ it’s where Hannibal Lecter keeps a severed head in The Silence of the Lambs; and a body was found in a self storage unit in Laura Wade’s play “Breathing Corpses”, performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2005. But they also show up in reality. Self storage units have been used to hide murder victims in a number of cases. In the UK, two female murder victims were found in self storage units, in Manchester in 1993, and in Brighton in 2003. In Florida in 2004 a man hid his dead father in a self storage unit because he could not afford the funeral fees ‒ until the managers, perceiving an unpleasant whiff, contacted him to say that they suspected a rodent had died in his unit…

Emergency service: immediate response

A woman telephoned her local self storage: “My husband has left me. So all his things are now sitting on the front doorstep. Could you organise for someone to come and collect them and put it all into storage, please? Now?”

“Yes indeed,” said the manager. And did.

Explosive stuff

In March 2004, and Access Storage facility in West London discovered in one of its units a 600-kg bag of ammonium nitrate  ‒  a fertilizer also used to make terrorist bombs.  It turned out to belong to a group of five Islamic jihadist terrorists of Pakistani origin. They were arrested in a massive operation, and tried in 2007: they had apparently intended to plant bombs in a number of locations, including the Bluewater Shopping Centre and the Ministry of Sound nightclub.

Yccch!

The US website for self storage professionals, Self-Storage Talk, has been running an online discussion called “Good finds… and Strange Finds” in its “Tales from the Trenches” section. Most contributions are not good at all. Many storage managers and staff record finding bottles of urine, boxes of poo. Other nasty oddities include a bag of rotting raw potatoes, a box of dead rats, and leaking containers of fish bait. One contributor found a box one hot and sweaty day, which he opened, only to discover it contained ash “cremains”, a third of which spilled out and stuck to his body.

The origins of flight

So one client asked: “Can I store my 22-ft microlight aircraft in one of your container units?”

Manager: “The units are only 20-ft long.”

Client: “Oh, so you can.”

Manager: “Er…”

Client: “It will fit diagonally. Clearly you are not a pilot.”

And so he did, and for several years, beginning his regular sorties from his self storage hangar.

3 Responses to “Ten self storage anecdotes”

1. David says:

   June 1, 2010 at 9:37 am

   These are funny/unsettling! Here’s another story from the US that might qualify. It could perhaps be called “Not a leg to stand on”!

   A self storage client defaulted on payment in North Carolina in 2007, so the contents of his unit were auctioned (as happens there). It turned out that the contents included an amputated and embalmed leg – formerly attached to the owner – which had been hidden in a barbecue smoker. The purchaser decided that he wanted to keep the leg to use as an exhibit in a Halloween display. The owner remonstrated, saying that he wished to be reunited with his leg at his death. After a brief legal tussle involving the police, the case was finally resolved in the amputee’s favour.

2. Storage says:

   February 15, 2011 at 12:20 pm

   Work hard on your writing.Your article is not up to mark.

3. Antony says:

   February 15, 2011 at 3:05 pm

   Sorry to disappoint, “Storage”! Actually, as you’ll see in the introduction to this blog, we were hoping that readers would add their own anecdotes, so we could build up a collection, but we’ve only been able to add one in nine months. So here’s another appeal for contributions!