A woman who lost all her worldly possessions after a fire ripped through a storage unit has revealed what it was like to lose everything she owned.
Helen Chandler-Wilde, 29, initially thought it was a “joke” when she heard about the devastating fire at Shurgard storage units in Croydon on New Year’s Eve 2018.
The journalist and writer, then in her twenties, had moved back in with her parents after a bad breakup and had packed all her belongings – “furniture, sentimental things, books” – into storage.
Having suddenly lost everything, Helen soon realized which possessions in life are really most important and which ones we can do without.
He has now written a book titled Lost and Found, documenting the painful process of rebuilding his life from scratch.
Helen Chandler-Wilde lost all her possessions after a fire ripped through a storage unit on New Year’s Eve 2018.
The New Year’s Eve fire at the Shurgard storage unit in Purley Way, Croydon, destroyed 1,198 rented units and was tackled by around 120 firefighters.
In the book, Helen talks to psychologists about the relationship between us and our things, including the “dopamine rush” that comes from buying new things and the human tendency to become attached to our objects.
“No one had died, but I almost felt like I was in mourning,” Helen writes of the deep loss she felt after the fire, adding, “I was a snail without my shell.”
And speaking to FEMAIL, Helen said: “I think it made me a lot more aware that you can’t rely on physical things to make you happy.”
‘When you start from scratch, I think you have this little opportunity to really think about what it is that I want.
“I think it’s very common in the way our culture is set up for people to collect things, buy a lot of things, and make a lot of purchases, especially whenever they open social media.”
Helen opens the prologue to her book by asking: ‘If you could save one thing from a fire, what would it be? I wish they had offered me the choice.
The New Year’s Eve fire at the Shurgard storage unit in Purley Way, Croydon, destroyed 1,198 rented units and was tackled by around 120 firefighters.
The building was destroyed as it was deemed too unsafe, as hundreds of people lost their belongings and, with them, many of their memories.
The storage unit before the fire – when Helen had moved a quarter of her things in
Helen has now written a book called Lost and Found, documenting the painful process of rebuilding her life from scratch.
Helen’s first step was to start replacing essentials, such as pots, and a friend of a friend gave her a bed.
She soon began to miss the little things, including a box of hair ties when she needed to go for a run and a coffee table with a red wine stain, a fond memory of a night out with friends.
A particularly painful point was losing more than 1,000 books in the flames and being left with a bookshelf, given by his parents, with nothing to fill it with.
“It’s strange not to have anything so sentimental or nice,” Helen said.
The loss of physical objects was also accompanied by the loss of memories and emotions linked to the objects.
Helen continued: ‘I think there’s still a lot of sadness because there were elements that were unique, like from a specific country you’ll never go to again.
‘I had a rug that came from Kosovo and obviously you’re not going to go back and look for one. Those things were so nice and beautiful. In my mind I can walk around my old house and see everything as it was even though that was years ago.
‘I had all these letters that my uncle had written to me over the years when I was a child. They were sweet little poems and jokes and stuff, but he’s already dead. “Sentimental things like photographs are simply irreplaceable because they remind you of the person.”
An eventual insurance payout of around £2,000 covered less than a third of Helen’s possessions.
The fire at the unit destroyed the belongings of hundreds of people, taking away their memories in doing so.
Pictured: The fire in the self-storage warehouse, which was later destroyed due to damage
Faced with yet another blow, he realized that his grim situation had a small advantage.
“I had a rare opportunity to start from scratch,” he writes in the book, and these moments of reflection allowed him to consider what he really needed.
Helen now lives in South London with a flatmate and a collection of meaningful, quality things.
She said: “I have a small amount of things that I really love and I have given away a lot of other things.”
“I think it’s much better to get something second-hand and a little quirky and feel unique, rather than something generic like everyone else has.”
He now focuses on buying high-quality items, usually second-hand, from charity shops, Vinted or eBay, that will last a long time, and has also significantly reduced the amount of stuff he owns.
Lost and Found is now available to purchase
Now her most prized possessions include a small television (one of the first things she bought back after the fire), a Victorian side cabinet from an antique store, and a floral sofa from IKEA.
In October 2022, she even did a “no shopping month,” purchasing only essential products like food, and has maintained these habits ever since.
“I think it showed me that you can get by living with the bare essentials for a really long period of time.” It can be more relaxing to do that and a lot less stressful,” she explained.
“Actually, nothing is truly permanent and I think that’s something I’ve learned: You can take care of an antique and you can call it museum-level conservation and it’s going to keep decaying all the time.”
Elsewhere in Lost & Found, Helen explores why people are drawn to collecting things in the first place (from showing condition to the excitement of collecting new objects) and the book contains insights from several psychologists.
Lost & Found offers seven key lessons learned from losing everything, sparking the realization that “she was not what she owned.”
Helen said writing it was like a “super long therapy session,” revealing: “It helped me get really clear and understand why I was so upset and why our minds are programmed to become attached to our possessions.”
Lost and found by Helen Chandler-Wilde is available now. Published by Octopus Publishing Group, RRP £20.