Storage unit for two years or sell everything — what did people actually regret, and what did keeping it really cost?

Do the arithmetic properly once, because it settles most of this and almost nobody does it.

For each category in there, write down what it would cost to replace second-hand, today, in the place you might land. Then compare that against the storage cost for however long you honestly think you will be away — and be honest, because everybody underestimates that number by about half.

When I did it the answer was stark and it was different per category:

Furniture lost badly. Generic sofas, tables, shelving — second-hand replacement was a fraction of what I was paying to store them, and that is before considering that I was paying to keep furniture I would not choose again.

Tools and the bike won easily. Expensive to replace, hold their value, and there is a real cost to rebuilding a tool collection piece by piece over years.

Books were the emotional one and lost on paper. That is a legitimate thing to pay for; it is just worth knowing that is what you are doing.

The useful outcome is not sell-or-keep, it is that you almost certainly want a much smaller unit. Most people are paying to store a small number of things they genuinely want and a large volume of things they will look at in three years and take to a charity shop. Shrinking the unit is available to you today and it does most of the saving.

The middle option nobody costs out: four boxes and a relative's loft.

Once you have applied the rule above, what is left is usually small enough not to need a commercial unit at all. Mine is documents, photographs, two boxes of things I could not part with, and a bag of winter clothes. It costs nothing, it is somewhere I visit anyway, and it removed the monthly reminder that was making me feel bad every time the payment went out.

Two practical things if you go this way:

Do not do it without asking properly, and do not let it be open-ended. "Until I get a place" is how a favour becomes a grievance. Give a date, and if the date moves, say so.

Make a list of what is in each box and photograph the contents. The reason you cannot decide about your unit right now is that you do not actually know what is in it. Whatever you keep, know what it is — a list on your phone means you can make this decision in ten minutes next time instead of turning it into a trip home.

And on your fear about furnishing a flat from nothing: it is genuinely a bad week, but it is one week and it is cheaper than you think second-hand. It is not two years of rent on a room for objects.

I sold everything. Three regrets, and the pattern in them is the useful part.

A good chef's knife and a cast iron pan. Not expensive to replace but the replacements are not the same — those two were properly worn in. Anything that improves with use is a bad thing to sell.

Photographs and papers I thought were digitised and were not. This is the only irreplaceable category and I nearly lost it by not checking. Whatever else you do, go through the paper before it goes anywhere.

A desk chair I had spent a long time choosing. Replacing it meant repeating the research and the money, and I got a worse one.

What I did not regret at all: furniture, kitchen equipment, books, clothes, electronics. All of it was replaceable, most of it more cheaply than storing it, and a surprising amount I never thought about again.

The rule I would give someone at your point: sell the replaceable, keep the irreplaceable and the worn-in, and be ruthless about which is which. The list of genuinely irreplaceable things is short — usually documents, photographs, a few sentimental objects and any tool you have shaped to yourself. That fits in a corner, not a unit.