I just earn myself a terabyte of online storage for two years. That's worth about $10 per month at current rates...or $240.
How I did this trick may be useful to you.
Over the last couple of years I have done casual reviews, comments and uploaded photos of points of interest on Google maps.
Google gives you little prizes for getting certain numbers of points. TripAdvisor does much the same but only awards badges. Others, like Withings award you with snippets of information for participation (eg "you have run the equivalent of circumnavigating Lake Titicaca")..but Google has a scheme that gives some serious privileges for being a "local guide".
I cracked 200 points in the Google scheme This was mainly by contributing technically poor but informative photos of various places and food eaten...answering yes/no questions and doing some short, not necessarily flattering, reviews of locations and services. The scheme rewards brevity and writing lengthy convoluted time consuming raves are not encouraged.
Why is this huge space useful? I use online space as a backup of everything worthwhile. All my photos are automatically uploaded in JPG format, and We use our printer scanner or phones to scan important paper documents and receipts into PDF rather than physically store them...no room in our tiny apartment. This makes all available from all of our devices and in a form that makes searchable by key words rather than folders or cryptic file names.
A confession: over my lifetime, I've been stung too often by my own ineptitude, traumas or laziness to do formal well ordered archives. I now refuse to use any of the common specialised local backup systems because they, so often, are abandon through bankruptcy, changes of technology and do not protect against physical decay of the recorded medium (PC drives are only good for five years, mobile storage three, memory sticks by ysage, recordable cds are prone to failure after a decader) or disasters like storm or fire. My precious Bayjournal archive wad done in by pure malicious vandalism reaching through a set of careful incremental backups.
Consequently I keep local files in whatever form they were done in to ensure retrieval does not present an issue. Yes, I know about the privacy concerns but I know how to encrypt anything too sensitive and not to allow it to go into the cloud.
While online storage is getting progressively cheaper and more reliable it still represents a significant cost. You may find this trick(or something similar) useful as a stopgap until we see such space woven into whatever internet or mobile plan you may have.
Keep in mind that, as a third level of backup, it is possible to pull down everything you have on line to some local storage. Google has a neat system for that but so do other services. Check out https://myaccount.google.com/privacy?pli=1#takeout Mileage varies.
Finally you may like to set up a a fail-safe for the unthinkable like dying in a car accident by assigning an "executor". you can even have a bunch of such people with various access rights of your personal online space(say, that bit that has important projects you were working on). such trusts are only activated if your account is not used for a given time.
In Basement B there is an open, unused space in the corner. In Basement A, a visitor carspace behind the rolladoor would have to be used. They would cost about $900 each plus the handyman’s time. As undercover they can be galvanised rather than stainless steel, so are cheaper.
