In my neck of the woods, storage space is rather expensive, even for a small space. I don't know what's worse, paying up to $200 monthly to store furniture for many months, or having to buy new furniture again at full retail? I normally just give away my large items like furniture to friends and family, and simply buy new again if or when the need arises. As for books and papers, that's pretty much unnecessary to store in my opinion. Papers can be scanned for the most part. Books are in digital format nowadays. Plus books and papers get all messed up with mildew over time from my experience, not to mention all the weight. Buy a decent portable scanner for the papers and documents that are important. Just as important, buy a decent shredder for all the papers that don't require storing. I literally went through 4 different shreadders at office supply stores before settling on a heavy duty one that can shred at least 25 pages at a time. The smaller shredders break down too quickly and get jammed up beyond repair. Nowadays, I barely store any paper documents, other than 3 to 4 years of tax returns, and some current store receipts in case of refund. I hardly have any books in my possession nowadays. Instead, I have gazillions of PDF and Word documents for articles and manuals stored in my smartphone and external storage drives. About 6 or 7 years ago, I went on a huge binge to declutter my life and literally trashed many hundreds and hundreds of pounds of stuff that was cluttering my closets. I will never go back to that again. Less is better in this regard. Good luck to you!