My wife and I had a fight about a box of VHS tapes last month.
Not a big fight. More of a “why are we paying to store this garbage” kind of argument. We’ve had it before. Usually ends with me mumbling something about nostalgia and her giving me “the look” before walking away.
We’ve had a storage unit for about four years now. Started when we moved into a smaller place. Told ourselves it was temporary. Just until we found a house with more closet space.
Well, we found the house. The unit never got emptied.
And honestly? We barely know what’s in there anymore. We pay the bill every month. Drive past it on our way to work. And just sort of… ignore it.
Then a buddy of mine told me he’d been using some AI app to sort through his garage. Said it took photos of everything and made a digital inventory. I laughed at first. Sounded like one of those tech solutions for a problem that just needs elbow grease.
But I was curious. And I was tired of the VHS tape argument.
So I tried it
I downloaded one of those apps. The kind that’s supposed to recognize objects in photos. Paid for the premium version because I figured if I was going to test this thing, I might as well do it right.
Drove to my unit on a Saturday morning. Coffee in hand. Ready to be disappointed.
Opened the door. Stared at the mountain of boxes. Felt that familiar wave of “nope” wash over me.
But I started taking pictures anyway. Box by box. The app would scan each one and try to identify what was inside. Sometimes it was dead wrong. Called my camping gear “sports equipment.” Called my old comic books “magazines.” Close enough, I guess.
But other times? It was creepy accurate. It spotted a specific model of camera lens in a box I hadn’t opened in years. It recognized a set of vintage kitchen knives just from a photo of the handles.
I spent about two hours doing this. By the time I was done, I had a digital list of everything in that unit. Every box. Every item it could identify.
And that’s when the real work started.
Seeing it all at once
There’s something about looking at a list of everything you own that makes you feel weird.
I scrolled through the app on my phone later that night. Scrolling. Scrolling. Box after box of stuff. Old clothes. Books I’ll never read again. Kitchen gadgets we replaced years ago. Sports equipment for sports I don’t play anymore.
It was honestly kind of embarrassing.
Here’s the thing about storage units. They’re great for hiding your stuff from yourself. Out of sight, out of mind. But when you actually see the inventory all together? When you can count how many boxes of “random cables” you’ve been paying to store for three years?
Suddenly it’s a lot harder to justify.
The math you can’t ignore
I’m a numbers person. Not like a math genius or anything. But I can do basic arithmetic.
The app I used had this feature where it could estimate resale value for some items. Probably just scraping eBay listings or whatever. Nothing fancy.
But it showed me that my old golf clubs were worth about forty bucks. The same set I’d been keeping because “I might play again someday.” Meanwhile, I’m paying sixty dollars a month for my unit. So basically, I’m paying more to store those clubs than they’re worth.
And that’s just one item.
When you start doing that math across your whole unit, it gets uncomfortable fast. I had boxes full of stuff that would cost more to store for six months than I could ever get selling them.
So what’s the point?
Here’s where I landed on it
AI didn’t clean my unit. I still had to do that. It didn’t make my decisions for me. I still had to figure out what to keep and what to toss.
But what it did do was give me a starting point.
Before, my unit was just a big chaotic wall of boxes. Impossible to tackle. Now I had a list. A list I could sort through from my couch while watching TV. I could look at each item, think about it for a second, and decide.
I started marking things. Keep. Donate. Trash. Sell.
And then I made a plan. Instead of just showing up at the unit with no direction, I knew exactly which boxes I needed to open. Which ones could just go straight to the donation center without even looking inside.
I won’t pretend I was totally efficient about it. I still kept some stuff that doesn’t make sense. A box of my kid’s artwork from kindergarten. That’s not going anywhere. Maybe I’m sentimental. Maybe I’m a hoarder. I don’t know.
But I did get rid of a lot. More than I thought I would.
What actually worked and what didn’t
Let me be honest about what this whole experiment taught me.
The stuff that helped:
- Having a list of everything. Made the whole thing less scary.
- Being able to take a photo of a box and know what’s in it. Saved me from opening fifty boxes just to find one thing.
- The resale estimates. Seeing the actual dollar amounts helped me let go of stuff I thought was valuable but really wasn’t.
- Identifying duplicates. I found three corkscrews in three different boxes. Why?
The stuff that was useless:
- The app couldn’t tell sentimental value. Shocker, right?
- It kept trying to tell me to discard family photos. Seriously? Dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.
- Sometimes it misidentified things so badly I just had to laugh. Called a lamp “construction tool.”
- It doesn’t help you actually move the stuff. Still gotta do that yourself.
What I’d tell you if you’re thinking about trying it
Look, I run a storage facility. I see people come in with good intentions all the time. They rent a unit, pack it up, and then never touch it again. A year goes by. Two years. They’re still paying.
And I get it. Life happens. You don’t have time. You don’t want to deal with it.
But if you’re ready to actually do something about your unit, tools like this can help. They’re not magic. They won’t fix your clutter problem for you. But they can make the process a little less overwhelming.
Take pictures of your stuff. Make a list. Look at the numbers. See what actually makes sense to keep.
And if you decide you need a little more time? That’s fine too. That’s literally why we’re here. We’ll keep your stuff safe until you’re ready to deal with it.
I still have VHS tapes in my unit. My wife still gives me a hard time about it. But at least now I know exactly what tapes they are. And one of these days, I’ll probably get rid of them.
Probably.
The important thing is, I’m not avoiding my unit anymore. I know what’s in there. I’m making decisions. And bit by bit, I’m getting it sorted out.
Technology didn’t do the work. But it gave me a push.
Sometimes a push is all you need.
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