A Richmond man has purchased a modular shelving system specifically to house his existing collection of storage solutions, a move he describes as "consolidation" and his partner describes as "the opposite of consolidation, in every meaningful sense."
The new unit, a floor-to-ceiling industrial-style shelving system from a Scandinavian retailer, now holds, among other things: four sizes of labelled clear plastic tub purchased during a previous organisational phase; a set of bamboo drawer dividers bought for a kitchen drawer they no longer fit; a stackable shoe rack system acquired before the household transitioned to a different, non-stacking shoe rack system, which is also still in the house; a canvas-sided "cable management" caddy, empty, reserved for cables not yet located; and a second, smaller shelving unit, purchased eighteen months ago to solve a storage problem that this shelving unit has now been bought to solve again, at a larger scale.
"I wouldn't call it hoarding," he said, gesturing at the unit, which required two people and a hex key to assemble and currently supports roughly nine kilograms of empty containers. "It's more that I like to be prepared for the eventuality of needing to store something, at any given time, in an appropriately sized vessel."
The house itself, a two-bedroom Victorian terrace he has owned for six years, has gradually taken on the character of a holding facility, with designated zones for seasonal items, "maybe" items, and a back room his partner refers to only as "the archive." A visiting friend reportedly asked, on a recent visit, whether he ran some kind of business out of the property.
"I don't think most people have a shelf specifically for things that are waiting to be sorted into other shelves," the partner said. "That's a shelf for shelving decisions. It's not a real category."
Asked whether he had considered simply discarding some of the earlier containers, now that they'd been functionally replaced, he paused for a long moment.
"I've thought about it," he said. "But some of those tubs have sentimental value. One of them held the Christmas decorations for two separate Christmases. You don't just get rid of that."
The new shelving system arrived with its own small assembly kit of spare screws and brackets, which he has since stored, unopened, in a labelled container on the shelf immediately above it.