Just over 2 years.
The begininning of the recession put the company I had worked for for 17 years out of business, and losing your job at the exact same time that companies are laying off rather than hiring is the absolute ULTIMATE in crappy timing. Lost my house, and since I wasn't finding anything in my field, we decided to go ahead and move in order for my wife to accept a better job. A good friend was generous enough to offer the two car garage at one of his rental properties as a place for us to store some things for awhile at no charge.
Unfortunately, that was a rough couple of years and since the kids get crabby if they go for more than 3 or 4 days without food (exaggerating there...
), we weren't quite able to scrounge up the spare cash to rent the second u-haul plus all of the gas money to go get the last load. Altogether, that would be about a $500 trip at a time when finding $20 for groceries was a challenge. My friend also eventually found himself in a financial bind as well, and had to put the rental property up for sale. He gave me plenty of warning, plenty of notice, and plenty of time, but I just couldn't scrape up the spare cash to make the expensive trip to get my stuff, so I gave him my blessing to have a garage sale, keep the stuff, throw it away, or whatever.
Unfortunately, all of my brewing gear was amongst the items I was storing there.
So I'm starting from scratch again after having had a pretty elaborate setup, but I guess that's life. I still have my family, we haven't ever had to be homeless (yet), and there's food on the table every night. Losing a bit of brewing gear isn't really something I can bring myself to cry over, given how bad things could have been there for awhile.
Life goes in cycles, you have your good years, and you have your bad years. I know a guy who lives in a $7 million dollar, 3 year old house, and he's also struggling to put food on the table and gas in the tank. (Translation: 3 years ago things were going well enough for him to build a 7 million dollar house. Today he can't buy groceries....)
So I guess if a rich guy is struggling just as much as I am, well, how much can I really complain? ****'s hard everywhere.....