My apartment was getting smaller each month, and this was impressive as it was already small in the first place. The layout had been initially billed by me. then I put it on my shelves. Then I spent a disgraceful amount of time viewing storage hacks on the internet of people who by some means or another such as the presence of beige sofas and the correct number of three items in sight have been able to rent suspiciously nice apartments. Check this out for more information!

Not much of it did a good deal of good.

The actual problem was deeper: I just had too much stuff that was installed in one apartment in Hong Kong and it was obvious that this was not constructed to accommodate real human beings. All the cabs were crowded. Under the bed there were some boxes. My suitcase cohabited with the couch as there was simply no other place to locate it.

Even to wash was irritating. I had a time-limited scenario because I had to reorganize random piles prior to vacuuming of the place because I was solving a puzzle with furniture.

The last thing that proved to be effective was that we rented a mini storage unit.

Being rather honest, I did not find that thought to be especially hospitable initially as I believed that storage units were rather expensive or targeted the population that went overseas. It happens that half of the people I was around were utilizing them silently. One of the colleagues had put there winter clothes. One had another kept business inventory. One of the neighbors leased a small unit which appeared to be filled with sports equipment and holiday decorations.

Makes sense now.

The apartments in Hong Kong are the ones that make people learn to stack things vertically, fold the furniture into the walls and have a hallway as storage. But all there comes to an end. You may make mess in perphenidences, and have no space.

It was almost instantly that the apartment was transformed by the storage unit. I kept a seasonal and outmoded record, the appliances not used in my kitchen, travel bags and hobby supplies which were not used on a daily basis. As soon as they had vanished the apartment was no longer overcrowded.

Not bigger exactly. Just calmer.

I was most surprised by that.

Clutters induce background stress which you nearly feel until you do away with it. The eye spot is on each of the loaded shelves. No room is left to accommodate something new in each small space. I swept out the place, and then I began to enjoy the apartment rather than letting it keep on pursuing me on a daily basis.

I would also not purchase haphazard storage containers anymore. It did appear my old plan. There were six others which could have been used in the event that the issue could not be solved using a single plastic container. Incredible logic there.

Mini storage also works very well in Hong Kong as the cost of changing to a larger apartment is usually far much more than anticipated. Lease an additional storage can be less expensive than upgrade your lease to have one more closet.

And the size of apartments is shrinking somehow and people not. It was this dislocation that constituted this whole culture of storage of the city. You can see all of the facilities around, adjacent to residential towers, inside the interiors of industrial buildings, above retail stores.

Even a few of them are pretty nice. Electronic access, lights, air conditioning. One of the places which I was visiting was more appealing as compared to my building lobby which was extremely rude.

It was not physical space that was the greatest change to me. It was flexibility.

I do not even have to feel the desire to get rid of useful things anymore because the apartment does not have the capacity to allow them to stay with it on the full-time basis anymore. Camping gear, old photo albums, winter blankets, additional guest chairs there they stay. They are not only sitting in my living room crowding the room on a daily basis.

Strangely enough, having cleared the mess, I did not find it necessary to worry about the necessity to change apartment anymore. Funny enough I did not hate the apartment so much as I hated struggling to accommodate my whole life in it.