but turned it off a bit later because of the storage requirements.
If the storage requirement is the only problem you had with running a full node then you should look into the pruning option. You would be running a full node since your client will download and verify everything and will keep a full chainstate but it will get rid of old blocks and by doing that it decreases the amount of space it takes up on your storage device.
This option was added in bitcoin core 0.11.0
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.11.0/doc/release-notes.md#block-file-pruningYou can use it by adding `prune=550` to your bitcoin.conf file, where 550 is the size it will keep in MB.