Just before I left London, I sorted through my wardrobe like a troll rummaging for gold in a mystical forest. It took me a couple days, but I did it thoroughly and rather ruthlessly – again, quite troll-like I suppose. There was a reason for that, I had a deadline. Not a work deadline mind you, although I have been known to do crazy reshuffling of everything around the house while on a deadline. This deadline was really more of a date with a company called ByStored and one of its handsome bow-tied men who were on their way to my house to drop off four large crates for me to fill-up with stuff they would then take back to the ByStored lair and look after while I enjoy my new found zen-like state.
Really this is an excuse for me to tell you again how good it feels to declutter. Especially when you aren’t actually throwing anything away (yet). Sometimes, when I do wardrobe clear outs, I am not as thorough as I could be because I can’t bring myself to discard some things, I can’t be bothered to list them on eBay etc. So I end up keeping a lot of items I could easily have parted with. If I know they are happily living in a warehouse and that I can re-order them whenever I want from my computer, then it is a different story. I have four crates of clothes at the ByStored warehouse for a year. I made a pact with myself that anything I don’t re-order during the year has to be given away or sold. Let’s see how this goes…
I could have done the hanger trick (when you turn the hangers and see what you use), I could have done many things, but the truth is I don’t have enough storage space in the house to try all these. My job revolves around clothes so my wardrobe is pretty packed and new things tend to come in before I am fully done with old things. Plus I am a bit of a hoarder when it comes to certain items (white shirts cough), so the conclusion was: stuff had to go. Out of sight, out of mind.
To cut a rather long (and now pretty boring) story short, I basically piled up many clothes in my hallway and waited for ByStored to take it away. Say hello to the clothes monster.
The process goes like this: you book an appointment, on the day you receive a text telling you your driver is on his way, they drop off the number of crates you requested. Then you have 20mn to fill up the crates with your clutter and they come back, do a quick inventory and take all your clutter away, leaving you with so much space in your closet you could do cartwheels in it. Naked (not pictured).
Seriously, if I can do it, anyone can. It is also pretty budget friendly – especially in London where space comes at the price of your soul mostly. The package I got is the “Small Pack” and costs £10 per week for 4 large crates (they fit A LOT). You can pre-pack your stuff in vacuum bags for space saving too. I did it for some of my more fragile items just in case, so they are totally protected. The collections are totally free if you pack under 20mn (£15 if you need longer).
If you need ByStored to return some items to you, you just order one of your crates back directly from your account on the website using the inventory list they gave you on the day of pick-up. Each crate is numbered so that’s super easy. Returns cost £15 which is less than a taxi ride to a storage facility in zone 4. Plus you get a visit from the handsome guy in a bow-tie again and this is priceless.
ByStored kindly gave me a discount code for you guys to get a free month of storage when you sign up, simply enter the code “SPACIOUS” at checkout.
Disclosure: I was offered a year free storage on ByStored for this post, but I will happily pay after that to keep using the service!