When I returned from Europe in April, I went down to my storage locker to grab a few items. Unfortunately, five months of boxes sitting on each other had taken its toll, and a few of them had shifted and fallen. Thankfully nothing was broken, but it was pretty clear that I needed to spend a bit of time rebuilding my locker at some point this summer. Yesterday I went to the locker and spent about two hours rebuilding everything. Based on the experience, here are a few pointers I would give to anyone putting their stuff away into a storage locker for an extended trip: Use high quality boxes. It's ...

When I left my apartment back in November of 2010, I put the majority of items into a 8x9x10 storage locker. I spent about a week selling off most of the big furniture (which would have been harder to store), and basically just ended up with a pile of boxes. I didn't hesitate at the time to put all my belongings into storage. I knew I would be gone at least four months, and likely more. But it's now July, which means my belongings have been in storage for seven months. At a price of roughly $100 per month for the storage locker, that means I'm up to $700 to store a bunch of boxes. At some point ...

One of the obvious problems with going away for a whole year is figuring out what to do with your mail. While many services and companies these days offer paperless options, many still do not. I know first hand that if your VISA bill gets returned to sender, the very first thing the VISA company will do is put a hold on your card until you get a proper address again. So it's important to have your mail end up somewhere. I briefly debated asking someone in my family to look after all my mail for me. The idea there would be to simply use one of their house addresses as my address, and have them ...

My landlord just stopped by for a visit. He had emailed me while I was down in Mexico and asked if he could bring some people by today, so I said sure. This morning I did a quick clean to make sure the place was presentable, and then set off to a coffee shop to do some work. Obviously the place wasn't spotless, since I have a bunch of half packed boxes around and have been in the process of packing for the last few weeks. But most of the bedrooms are empty and the living room basically has a huge pile of boxes in the corner. So I was a bit surprised when, upon arriving back home, my landlord ...

Today marks the two week mark before I'm officially homeless. It's the first big milestone for my adventure, and I'm looking forward to finally hitting that point. I have about 80% of my apartment boxed up, with only the kitchen to go. I'll slowly box up the remainder this week, and hopefully start transferring everything into storage next weekend. Tomorrow my landlord is bringing some people over to look at the place and hopefully rent it out. He hasn't seen the apartment in about six months, so hopefully he doesn't find anything wrong with it. I'm counting on getting my full damage deposit ...

Today is November 4th, and my flight to Buenos Aires leaves on January 4th, 2011. That means there are only 60 days left to go until I depart on my big adventure. It wasn't that long ago I was doing a post in celebration of 150 days to go, and now here we are at the two month point. I'm heading to Mexico tomorrow via WestJet in Vancouver. I spent most of last night packing my suitcase and trying to get my apartment as clean as possible in case my landlord decides to show the apartment while I'm gone. In truth, there really isn't too much more to do in my apartment when I return. Other than the ...

In just 45 days, I'll be out of my apartment out in Chilliwack, and essentially homeless for the next 30 days. Truthfully, now that my place is partially boxed up, I'm getting antsy to hit the open road. My current plan is to have a lot of my stuff already in storage around November 1st, so I can possibly go visit a few people in the United States in November. As I mentioned before, I'm also heading to the Mayan Riviera in just three weeks, which will be a nice break from the norm. I haven't had a vacation in the sun since about the same time last year, so I'm definitely looking forward to chilling ...