This time of the year makes me think of one of the many cycles in our individual lives that we perpetuate ourselves, namely buying new stuff, storing old stuff then chucking out old stuff to make room for the new old stuff because we just bought or were given a lot more new stuff.

The beginning of the New Year is a great time to contemplate what we should sell, give away, recycle or, failing any of the former, toss onto the scrap heap. For the things we really need to keep, storage can be a costly problem, but it doesn't need to be.

One of the simplest ideas is under bed storage. The dollar store version is a 42" x 18" x 6" vinyl storage bag with a zippered top and pull handles. It isn't impervious to nicks or tears, but it will keep the dust off of your sweaters if all it's doing is sitting under a bed 24-7. At a buck a piece, you could buy several of these fold-able containers for the same price as one hard plastic under bed storage unit, which costs $9.97 for a 32 1/8" x 19 1/8" x 7" size with wheels that I found at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart also stocks a three piece vinyl and fabric storage set for about $10 that includes an under bed bag that's 42 x 8 x 18" big and two sweater bags 15 1/2" x 13 1/2" x 3" each.

The Daily Deal for December 10, 2007

We're big fans of protecting your data here at WalletPop. Let's face it: we've seen far too many of our friends and colleagues lose days of productivity and weeks of work thanks to an untimely hard drive crash. And if any of you have children who like to jostle you while you're drinking your coffee... well. You get the picture. Backup drives are Very Good Things. Deals on quality USB backup hard drives? Even Better Things.

That's why we picked out this reconditioned, portable, high-speed 80 GB USB hard drive from Iomega as our Daily Deal. It's $55.95 and ground shipping to my address would be $8.95; not a screaming bargain on the shipping, but still cheaper than a comparable product at Amazon, even with Amazon Prime's free shipping (this Western Digital hard drive was the best deal at $77.99, 20% off retail price; elsewhere the best price we could find was $81.99 for a TEAC unit at PC Connection). The deal is good through Tuesday early morning.