I’ve got a lot to cover, so it’s bean-spilling time(!): DOWNSIZING.

If you can’t remember when you signed a contract and aren’t sure how many rental increases you’ve tolerated, you’re going to be amazed at the sum spent on your ‘silent-killer’ storage unit. It goes without saying that you can’t part with everything in your storage unit, but I’m hoping the prior blog inspired you to wonder how much of your stored stuff is simply superfluous. It’s likely that you have some room in your garage to absorb some of the load, that you favor an organization (Goodwill, Salvation Army, a veteran’s association, etc.) or a friend/relative who’d be more than welcome to receive a portion of goods, and/or that you’re now willing to dispose of a few things that simply have no value to anyone: the 200+ VHS tape collection that even a decade in your home hadn’t seen action, that solitary ski pole or crutch, socks and underwear whose elastic has mummified, etc. Moving items to a smaller unit not only gives you the opportunity to take inventory (and act accordingly!) but to effect witting maintenance: to consolidate partly loaded boxes and totes, to replace boxes that are collapsing, to seal boxes whose tape may have dried up and/or peeled off, and maybe even to label unmarked or poorly marked boxes. (I can bring a work table to expedite these matters.) And even if none of what I’ve traced out in the last two sentences is applicable to your situation, what I’ve found over the years is that many people had rented too large a unit in the first place (perhaps a more appropriate size hadn’t been available at the move-in date) and/or had not effectively packed their units at the onset. I could go on, I could go on.

Prices range widely throughout the Orange County for several reasons, but let’s assume the average hovers around $1.20/sq. ft. We can also assume that larger units offer a greater value, but this thumb-rule isn’t always applicable. Let’s say you’re renting a 10’ x 10’ and plan to have the unit for at least another 12 months. In this scenario, you’re going to pay $1440 in that span of time. With some savvy box consolidation, some heartfelt purging, and some Tetris-intensive restacking, we can likely get you into a 5’ x 10’ that runs for almost half the price, which means that over the course of one year, you’re going to save up to $720 in rental expenses. Of course bringing me on board to help in the project would be an added expense, but my charge would pale in comparison and of course there’s the esteem you’d get from handling today what you’ve been putting off until tomorrow.

I believe when it comes to storage units, people remain on the fence for years until something life-changing forces their hand. It seems that because something remains out of sight, it remains out of mind, and with automatic bill payments, open-ended leases, and steady price increases, more and more money streams out of people's pockets without their ever being fully conscious of the overall expense. Ever notice just how many storage facilities there are in your city? And they just keep cropping up or expanding on site. These facilities are cashing in on people's reluctance, indecision, or absent-mindedness, and the sobering irony is people end up paying much more in rental feels (sometimes in the order of $1000's) than the total value of stored items. In defense, a person might say items in their storage unit have sentimental value, perhaps that they themselves are the custodian of so many family heirlooms and fond remembrances, but I would parry saying that if they have lost sight of the items in their unit, i.e. every box opened contains would-be surprises or things that would never have been recalled otherwise, then the contents are not that significant. Taking a different tack, I would point out that other objects have since come into their lives and have attained newfound significance (supplanting that of old), that the items in a given storage unit may be tethering them to a past that no longer represents them. I would concede that many items likely do have sentimental value, but point out that they simply all can't, and make my closing statement the following: beware using sentimentality to rationalize negligence. There's more to point out--the psychology associated with excuse-making gets fairly complex--but if I've got your attention, I think you're ready to ponder a solution with me.

The question remains: how do you avoid a cam nut tightening prematurely? You will see on any given cam screw that just beyond the threading (the portion that’s designed to screw into wood), there is a collar or flange designed not only to prevent the screw from going too deep (and perhaps piercing the veneered surface on the opposite side) but also, more pertinently, designed to set the height the head of the screw at the perfect height, meaning the cam nut can be locked with just the right tension. Sadly, many times the flange setting is an incorrect guide, less so with IKEA than with other manufacturers, which means you may have driven the screw so that the collar is flush to the wood, but the screw head ends up sitting too low, and if it’s too low, then the cam nut cannot lock (or worse, you might actually break the cam nut turning it so hard). Understand that in turning the cam nut that you’re capturing the head of the cam screw and pulling it toward the center of the cam nut itself, which of course draws the two pieces of wood together (recall the dresser example from the prior blog entry). To correct this, usually you just have to counterturn each screw about a 90° (sometimes as much 180°) to achieve the perfect height. As a jig had presumably been used to drill all the insertion spaces for the cam nuts, this means counter-adjustments will need to be made to each of the many cam screws that you’ve already driven. What may be especially frustrating, let’s again imagine the dresser, is that in placing a large panel, in this case the dresser’s top, you have had to onerously line up several holes just to place the piece in position, and you find that some cam nuts are not locking. You understandably don’t want to backtrack, but you have to! Gently return all of the cam nuts to starting position (arrow pointing toward screw), lift the panel off, and make the necessary adjustments to the screws. Let the cam that did lock with an agreeable amount of tension be your guide. Sometimes I use my fingernail as a gauge: counterturn the screw just enough so that you can barely slide your fingernail between the collar and wood surface. Beware creating the opposite problem: reaching the 180°+ mark—your cam lock coming to a full stop—but hardly any tension is felt in the rotation. You’ve technically locked the cam nut, but because the cam screw has not been seated deeply enough, you’re not putting sufficient pull on the head of the screw. This is less of a problem, but understand that loosely locked cams mean your furniture might jiggle and sway overmuch, which also sets the stage for eventual product failure. RTA furniture, especially the variety that depends upon low-density particle board and cam lock fasteners, must be assembled as correctly as possible if it’s to withstand the rigors of daily use and yearly relocation. When you get the tension just right, you’ll know it and when you get every fastener appropriately locked in a given project, you should pat yourself on the back.

There’s a science behind making IKEA furniture last, but as I’m writing a blog entry, I’ll just touch on the most common problem I’ve encountered: unlocked cam nuts. IKEA has chosen to go the non-language route, save for product material/composition warnings, in their instructions manuals, and so instead of explaining the dynamics behind a cam lock or even what exactly to do in order to correctly ensure that it locks, IKEA includes a pictogram of the cam rotated by a screwdriver whose shaft is encircled by a directional arrow (note that I’m not referring to the arrow that is on the actual cam nut). The implication here is that one simply needs to turn the screwdriver until the nut is tight (…because 360° is impossible). Other illustrations are more adept, showing the rotational arrow describing only a half circle, but then it’s not obvious to the layperson that 180° must be reached. The problem you may encounter then is the nut you’re fastening may have tightnened prematurely—let’s say you turned a few cam nut to 120° degress, you’re still nowhere close to where you should be for the cam nut to fully seat. I think most people at this point just shrug and think, “it’s pretty tight” or “I’m close enough.” Let’s also say you fail to completely lock two to three cam nuts of the total eight that secure the top of a hypothetical dresser. After, moving this dresser a few times (imagine the dresser is on a dolly that undergoes a good deal of vibration), the cams of the unlocked screws will creep counterclockwise until they slip at a critical moment. Thus, when you go to lift the dresser from the top or to slide your dresser across the carpet (neither of these things you should do IKEA furniture anyway!), other cams screws whose cam nuts ARE locked—now under stress they weren’t designed for—rip out of or at least crack the particle board they’d been screwed into. (The irony is the locked cams did the final damage.) With cam nuts, it’s all or nothing: you either reach 180°, technically just beyond, or you pave the way to mishap and wallet drain. Oh how a simple asterisk or even a few inset digits could have saved 100,000’s (millions?) of IKEA items from ending up in landfills!

A useful tip for any homeowner who has hardwood or linoleum flooring is making sure they’re—at least the span we’ll be schlepping your furniture across—clean before my arrival. It’s not so much grime or dust that's an issue (dust bunnies are truly harmless creatures), but small gravel-sized specks, think kitty litter, or small pieces of metal, think paperclips, tiny wood screws, the stray ball bearing. Your flooring can get scuffed, pocked, or even gouged should such material finds its way under dolly/hand truck wheels or padded moving sliders. Tile of course is more forgiving, impeccable if you will, but a quick sweep or vacuum is always recommended if we’re not hand-carrying large items. You’re likely planning to clean the space in which your new piece of furniture will occupy, so go the extra mile and clean the pathway up to that space as well.

If you live in an apartment, especially one built more than 40 years ago, and are planning to buy a large sofa, you want to mindful of several things. First, take your measurements! Know the height and width of your smallest entryway is only part of the issue. In the case where a wall opposite a front door is only three feet away, with just enough space for door to swing open, the question becomes, can the couch make the turn? This is also true for exterior hallways. Here a couch around 96” can be tricky especially if you can’t make the turn in the hallway. In such a case, you’re forced to put the couch on end and likely feed it bottom first through your doorway—you should in this scenario have moving/padded blankets under the workspace. And note this method is hard to effect with the sofa’s sides rounded. There’s more to point out, but the reality should be clear: some types of furniture are simply not designed for apartments OR some old apartments just have some strange prophylactic quirks!