Chuck enjoys watching Storage Wars. I have mixed feelings. The “stuff” they find can be fascinating, and yet – these collections of stored possessions once belonged to someone, someone who  cared enough to stash their possessions in a “safe” place. I always wonder about the back story on the abandoned units.

Tonight a unit contained a small kiln and a pottery wheel, neither looking very used. Did an artist make the investment and then have a financial disaster? Medical crisis? Self-employed artists aren’t known for having good health insurance coverage. Job loss? Maybe the day job that paid the rent fell through, downsized, or went out of business. Loss of space, home? That’s possible, too. A pottery wheel and kiln wouldn’t fit into a homeless shelter or transitional housing very well. There’s no way to know, and I wonder.

Another unit contained a unique set of tools for ice carving.The ice carving tools looked nearly new and must have cost the original purchaser a fair amount of money. An investment in their future, they may have thought at the time, never dreaming the tools would be lost due to non-payment on a padlocked storage facility.

This episode could have been nicknamed “Picking up the remains from the starving, broke artists.” Two artists: one with clay and the other with ice, both lost or broke or homeless or all three. The show’s premise, making money off of another’s misfortune, just isn’t sitting well with me. I can’t keep a potter or ice carver in business, but I can continue to appreciate and buy from local artists. And most of all, I can stop watching this depressing show.