My husband has been running his recording studio for quite a few years now and his persistence has finally started to pay off. He's had a busy year and he's starting to look around the studio and figure out how to optimize it for more steady business.
One of his hobbies is trading music gear. That makes sense in this economy because no one is really buying much musical equipment. Trades allow musicians to get new (to them) gear to play with without any exchange of cash. However, he's done a few too many trades of small things (snare drums, guitars) for large things (drum sets). So now the studio is almost literally wall to wall drum kits. They're stacked up, but they still take up a ton of room and they need to be moved somewhere else.
This morning, my husband announced that he was going to get a storage unit for his drums. Now I've seen enough episodes of Storage Wars to have a strong negative opinion of the idea of taking a bunch of your valuable stuff and leaving it in someone else's possession. Not only does the expense add up, but the risk and sheer hassle factor are high.
Seriously, if you're going to spend $840 a year to store drum kits, you might as well just give one away every year until they're gone.
I countered that he should store his excess gear in our basement instead. That's where all my music gear resides. It's secure behind two sets of locked doors, a consistent temperature year 'round, and we have a dehumidifier running 24/7.
The only problem is that the shelves are currently occupied with a bunch of my dad's old business records and outdated printed materials. The majority of it can be discarded now, but it will need to be shredded, preferably on-site or in some other secure fashion.
I'm sure you can see where this is going. We've netted out with me agreeing to get the shelves cleared off within the next month or so.
I really do think that the basement is the best option for this. It may need a little visit from the exterminator first, just to keep the spider levels to a minimum, but otherwise it's perfect. Or it will be.
I would recommend burning the outdated documents. Quick, easy, cheap and a ton of fun for firebugs. That is what I did with a bunch of my grandma's outdated documents.
Posted by: Amanda | August 10, 2012 at 09:25 AM