In our Money Secrets series, we ask people to confess their furtive money-related secrets which they are hiding from loved ones or that people do not know the full extent about.
Today, we speak to Suzanne, 31, whose name we have changed to protect her identity. She reveals how she told her boyfriend she had carried out a massive purge of her possessions when they moved in together – but in reality, she is paying to hoard them in a storage unit.
When my boyfriend Toby (not his real name) asked me to move in with him, I felt so happy as I know he is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.
We have been together for three years and I had been living in a house share with my three friends, while he had saved up and bought his own one-bedroom flat.
Since we met, we had been spending more and more time together and after two years, we realised I was spending almost every night sleeping at his place and carrying all my stuff there in a holdall.
So when Toby suggested I moved in with him just over a year ago, I was thrilled. Not only because it meant our relationship would be moving on to the next stage, but also because I would save money on rent for a place I hardly ever stayed, and I wouldn’t have to keep living out of a travel bag.
Toby is perfect in many ways – but he has one drawback, he is freakishly tidy and neat and his flat is very modern and minimalistic. I, on the other hand, have a lot of stuff and am a bit of a hoarder who doesn’t like getting rid of things.
I’m not one of those extreme hoarders who have so much weird stuff piled up in their home that you can’t even open the front door properly, but I do like nice things and can’t stop buying things like clothes, handbags and shoes.
As well as wanting new things, I want to keep the things I’ve already got and definitely don’t want to adopt a “one-in, one-out” policy as Toby has suggested.
One of my other pleasures is buying books. While so many people now use things like Kindles and e-readers for their reading, for me, nothing beats the feel of a real book. I love the feel and smell of a proper book and enjoy actually being able to turn the pages as I read.
When Toby asked me to move in with him, he laughed and told me that it would mean I would have to be ruthless in cutting down my stuff. At the time, I was so happy at the prospect of moving in with him, I told him that would be no problem.
But the reality was, it was absolutely impossible to slash my stuff down to such a tiny amount and it would have been heartbreaking to get rid of so many lovely things. Toby had one wardrobe and in anticipation of me moving in, he had a clearout of his own and kindly told me I could have three-quarters of the available space.
However, it was ridiculous as it wouldn’t have been enough for even a fraction of my clothes. Just my collection of sleepwear alone would have filled it twice. Toby then bought a chest of drawers with four drawers and put it on one side of the bedroom and told me I could put any extra clothes in there. It was thoughtful of him, but it was still not enough room for all my clothes. And that’s before I even started considering the shoes, handbags and books.
I took some stuff to my parent’s home, but they recently downsized to a bungalow, so have limited room themselves – and they also live 200 miles away from me, so it wouldn’t have been easy to nip there whenever I needed anything.
When I discussed my dilemma with Toby, he told me I just needed to be ruthless and to look at it as a way or earning some extra money, as I could always sell a lot of it on places like Vinted and eBay and donate the rest to charity.
So that’s what I told him I did – and it is what I fully intended to do – but when it came down to it, there were so many beautiful things that I just couldn’t bring myself to part with. It would have been like cutting off my own limbs.
When I was discussing it with one of my friends, she came up with the brainwave that I could pay to put my stuff in storage and then when me and Toby could afford to buy a bigger place together in the future, I could simply get it all back and put it in our new home.
So that is what I have done. I got some quotes for how much it would cost for storage and I have managed to find a storage unit which I am paying just under £950 a year for to store all my things.
It looks like an Aladdin’s cave. It has all my excess clothes and dresses, boxes and boxes of shoes and piles of books. The only problem is, I have now convinced myself it is like an extra wardrobe and I keep buying more things and thinking I can just put them into storage. As a result, I now have 72 pairs of shoes and I keep most of them in the storage unit in their shoeboxes to keep them looking nice.
I regularly swap things around and keep some things in the flat and then swap them out for others. Even though I have been doing this for over a year, Toby doesn’t seem to have noticed my interchanging wardrobe and shoes and handbags.
There was only the one time, he saw a dress and asked if it was new, not realising it was one I had for years, but had just taken out of storage for a night out. I just told him a friend had lent it to me and he didn’t think any more of it.
I do feel guilty for hiding it from him, but it’s not like I’m having an affair or hurting him in some way. It does mean I am spending money for storage which I could be saving towards a house deposit as me and Toby are planning to buy a bigger place together once we’ve saved enough.
I tell myself it is actually an investment by storing my clothes and other possessions as when we do eventually get a new place, I won’t have to go out and buy a load of new stuff to fill our extra space as I’ll already have it.
But until then, I’ll just carry on paying for my secret storage space.
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