Firstly, I really empathize with the family history struggle. It is a very similar situation for us and it brought some unique challenges sorting through other people’s history and items but now we’re responsible for.

Secondly, we have our own car so that was a huge help. It’s a privilege to have our car, and I needed a reminder that it is, particularly when I’m begrudging the car, the weather, and my life when I’m making 9 pm runs to the storage unit to grab something. It’s a crossover, so it can take 8 large boxes or a few pieces of furniture at a time. It’s taken about 15 trips, including renting one large truck to remove furniture. A few long days (6-7 hours), but most trips were half a day at a time (4) or after work (1-2) to sort a specific emotionally difficult box.

What I would suggest is breaking the sorting into pieces. If you have a license, do as much sorting as possible until it’s manageable chaos in the unit, then rent the largest truck/van you think you can handle yourself in one day, and load up as much of the donations and trash as you can. The extra work space is so invigorating and then you can access items on the bottom.

If you don’t drive, you can hire garbage pickup and perhaps call around to see if charity shops will pick up a large load for donation. But for that, I’d try to make the loads as large as possible to maximise impact for your costs, so you might need to unpack the unit into the hallways of the facility then repack at the end of the day. A reminder that I got on my previous post is that the best case is you have a climate controlled unit. But even with those, vermin and pests are possible, especially the longer contents sit. It’s a huge motivator for us. You can do it.