I am going to be honest with you. I used to think people who rented storage units for anything other than moving were kind of extra. Like why pay money to store stuff you already own? That seemed backwards to me.
Then last year happened.
I had three birthday parties in one weekend. Three. Back to back. One for my nephew. One for a coworker. One for my best friend from college. I spent Friday night running around like a crazy person trying to find gifts. I spent way too much money. I bought stuff that I was not even excited about. By Sunday I was exhausted and broke and honestly kind of annoyed at everyone for having birthdays.
That weekend is when I realized I had a problem. Not with birthdays. With how I handled them.
I looked around my house and thought okay where can I keep gifts so this does not happen again. I have a hall closet. It is full of coats and shoes and vacuum cleaner attachments. I have a basement. It floods when it rains hard. I have a garage. My husband parks there and also stores like twelve fishing rods and a workbench. No space.
So I did something I said I would never do. I rented a small storage unit.
What I Mean By Gift Library
The term sounds fancy but it is not. A gift library is literally just a place where you keep gifts before you give them. That is it.
For me it is a 5×5 unit. I have three plastic bins in there. One bin is for kid gifts. One bin is for adult gifts. One bin is for random stuff like wrapping supplies and tape.
When I see something on sale that I know someone will like, I buy it and I put it in the bin. That is the whole system.
No spreadsheet. No color coding. No app.
I tried keeping a list on my phone but I kept forgetting to update it so I stopped. Now I just open the bins every couple months and see what is in there. If I forgot I bought something, oh well. It is a nice surprise for me too.
Why Hiding Gifts at Home Never Worked
Let me tell you about the Christmas my daughter found her main gift in my closet.
She was looking for her snow boots. I was at work. She opened my closet door, moved a jacket, and there it was. The dollhouse she had been asking for for months. She told me that night at dinner. She was not even trying to be sneaky. She just said oh I saw my dollhouse in your closet.
I wanted to cry.
That was the moment I realized my house is not a secure location. My kids are curious. My husband reorganizes things without telling me. I myself forget where I put stuff. I once found a birthday gift for my mom in the trunk of my car six months after her birthday. It was July. The candle had melted into a weird shape.
A storage unit solves all of this. It is a locked space that I control. Nobody else has the key. Nobody is going to accidentally stumble onto the gift for their own birthday. And I always know exactly where everything is because it is not competing for space with my winter coats or my kids toys or the ten boxes of Christmas decorations.
The First Time I Used It
I had the unit for about two months before I actually needed it. My nephew was turning six. I went to the unit the night before his party. Opened the kid bin. Found a dinosaur excavation kit I had bought on clearance months earlier. Also found a puzzle I forgot I bought. I grabbed both.
I spent maybe ten dollars total on those gifts. They looked like I spent a lot more.
I showed up to the party. My sister said oh you did not have to get him two things. I said it was nothing. She does not know I bought them six months ago and stored them in a box in a building across town. To her it looked like I was just generous. To me it felt like I had finally figured out a system that worked.
How Much Does This Actually Cost
People always ask me this.
My unit is a small one. I pay less than what I used to spend on expedited shipping fees during the holidays. That is how I think about it.
Before the unit I would order gifts on Amazon two days before an event and pay for one day shipping because I waited too long. Or I would go to a store and buy whatever was there at full price because I had no time to shop around.
Now I buy things when they are cheap. I buy things when I am at a craft fair or a flea market and I see something unique. I spread the cost out over twelve months instead of cramming it all into November and December.
I also waste less money on gifts that are bad. You know what I mean. The gift you buy in a panic that the person probably does not even want. When you have time to think about gifts, you buy better ones.
So yeah I pay for the unit. But I am pretty sure I save more than that in better shopping habits.
What We Offer
Since you are on our site, our storage unit service has small units that are perfect for this. You do not need a huge space. A 5×5 fits several bins and a small shelf. We have climate controlled options if you are storing things like candles or chocolate or wine. We are month to month so you can try it for a few months and see if it works for you.
I use one of our units myself. I am not just saying this to sell you something. I actually do this. My gift bins are in unit 217. I was there last week pulling out a birthday present for my neighbor.
What I Messed Up
I am not an expert. I made mistakes. Here are some so you do not have to.
I bought too much for one person.
I found these really nice coffee mugs on sale and bought like four sets. Guess how many people I know who need coffee mugs as gifts? Almost none. I still have two sets sitting in my unit.
I forgot about expiration dates.
I put a box of fancy chocolates in my unit in August thinking I would give it for a holiday gift. I pulled it out in December and it was past its date. Not a fun surprise.
I did not label anything at first.
I just threw stuff in bins. Then I had to dig through everything every time I needed a gift. Now I use sticky notes. Nothing fancy. Just a note that says “Aunt Jane” or “hostess gift” so I know what I am looking at.
I kept wrapping paper in the unit.
The paper got wrinkled from being moved around. Now I just grab the unwrapped gift and bring it home to wrap.
Why I Keep Doing It
I have had this unit for over a year now. I thought about canceling it a few times. But every time I think about it, I have a moment that reminds me why I keep it.
Last month my friend called me. She said her mom just got a promotion and she wanted to do something nice for her. She was stressed trying to find a gift. I went to my unit. I had a nice candle and a fancy soap set in there that I bought months ago at a craft fair. I gave them to my friend. She was so relieved.
I did not even need those gifts for anyone specific. But because I had them, I could help my friend in a moment when she was stressed.
That is what the gift library becomes after a while. Not just a place to store stuff. But a resource. You have things ready for the moments that come up unexpectedly. A coworker has a baby. A neighbor does something nice for you. A friend is going through a rough time.
You are not running to the store at 8pm. You just go to your unit. You already have something.
You Do Not Need Much Space
If you are reading this and thinking I do not have room for this stuff in my house, I get it. That is exactly why I got the unit.
If you are reading this and thinking I do not have enough money for a storage unit, I get that too. I would say start with a really small one. The smallest we offer. See how it goes. You can always upgrade later or cancel if it is not working.
For me it ended up being one of those things I did not know I needed until I tried it. Now I cannot imagine going back to hiding gifts in my closet and hoping nobody finds them.
If you want to try it, come see us. We will show you the small units. You can bring your own bins or buy some from the store down the street. It takes maybe an hour to set up. Then you are done.
And the next time you have a birthday or a holiday or a last minute thing you forgot about, you just go to your unit. You grab something. You wrap it. You show up looking like you had it together the whole time.
That feeling alone is worth the cost of the unit. Trust me on that.
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