La Voz de Galicia – 19 de abril, 2026 →
A few weeks ago I was reading an article in The New York Times about a young man from New Jersey who, as a hobby, buys abandoned storage units at public auctions and then resells their contents. According to the article, “he just wanted to make some money,” but after a couple of years he learned that “every locker tells a story, many of them bleak,” something that made me think about the number of stories that remain with the things we leave behind. During those same weeks, the obituary of Swedish writer Margareta Magnusson was published. In her book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, she reflects on the idea of getting rid of everything unnecessary before dying, “making sure that someone else won’t be saddled with picking up after you”.
Last year, when we finally installed heating in our home in Ourense, we had to get rid of a few pieces of furniture to make space for the radiators, and that was when the idea of renting a storage unit started turning over in my mind. Suddenly I was convinced that it would solve all my problems: I would put there all those beautiful pieces of furniture that no longer fit in my home, as well as the archive of my previous life, and all the things I no longer want to see around the house but that I also don’t want to get rid of… I even started looking online for storage units for rent or sale in the province of Ourense. And then I thought: what for? What will happen to all those things we set aside but not completely, that we leave somewhere “just in case” and then never use again… who will be the one who ends up having to get rid of all that, things I didn’t even know I had?
How difficult it is to let go of things and memories, but how difficult it is to carry them too…
